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1 The Hillocks Are Green and Full of Sunshine 



The 
Fragrant Note Book 

Romance and Legend of the Flower 
Garden and the Bye-Way 

By 

G. Arthur Coan, LL.B. 

n 

" The History of an Appearance " " Nature's Harmonic 
Unity" (collab.), etc. 



Decorated and Illustrated by 
Frances C. Challenor Coan 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

Gbe Umfcfterbocfcer press 

1917 






Copyright, 1917 

BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



MAY 23 1917 



Ube Tfcnfcfeerbocfeer press, IRew Ijjetft 



1 CI. A 4 67 149 



-1 - 



I , 



CONTENTS 



Introductory: The Lodge of the Dumb Porter 
I. — The Garden Gate, including "The Garden 
Antiphone, "* 

II. — Spring's Promise 
III. — The Dingle Dell . 
IV. — The Little People . 

V. — Hera's Messenger Service 

VI. — The Morn of a Thousand Roses 

VII. — The Four Winds of Heaven.* An Inter- 
lude 

VIII. — Great-Grandam's Posy . 

IX. — Hedgerows and Hillocks Green 

X. — The Masquerader . 

XL — Flora's Sceptre 

XII. — A Year and a Day.* An Interlude 

XIII. — The Chancellor's Conscience 

XIV. — Auspicious Hope 

The Cold Frames . 



PAGE 
I 

5 

9 
16 

29 

45 

49 

55 
62 

69 

85 
90 

96 

98 

105 

1^5 



*the interludes 

Introduced as interludes or incidental verses will be found 
the following poems composed by the author and, with one or 
two exceptions, written especially for The Fragrant Note Book. 
These latter have not appeared previously: 

The Garden Antiphone, The Puppy's Lament, Petunia Hats, 
The Puppy 's Approval, The Four Winds of Heaven, Grandam's 
Posy, A Year and a Day, and Who'll Bring Yule Logs ? 







The Fragrant Note Book 






THE LODGE OF THE DUMB PORTER 



WANDERING along the lanes and bye-ways of life, 
should you choose certain turns in their pre- 
scribed order you would find yourself (as it seems 
that you have) facing the modest little lodge of my dumb 
porter. He is dumb and he is ancient, and that of itself being 
unusual should prove to be interesting, since the aged are cus- 
tomarily garrulous ; but he is a good chap withal and will come 
stumping to meet you from his little shelter which has a back 
and sides but is open in front. He calls it "The Bindings. " 
The Arab has a saying that where he has struck flint to 
tinder and tinder to wood and the warming blaze has sprung 
up, there for the time being the son of Allah is at home. 
Even in this spirit of the desert wanderer has a generous 
hearth been built in the lodge of Caxton my dumb porter, 
whose hospitality you need never doubt and who will early 
draw your attention to the old inscription graven over the 
fireplace, 




















2 £be jfragrant Bote Book 

"to say you are welcome were superfluous." 

In the inglenook beside the hearth he will point you to 
the guest book and lay his work-worn hand upon the 
volume while with a taloned fore-finger he will underscore 
the message printed at the top. Clearly he wishes you to 
read the page and will not be satisfied else. Indulgent 
of his dumbness rather than interested in what you ex- 
pect to find, you glance at the leaf which bears this 
greeting: U i /£&. 

To all visitors: The dumb porter has been 
carefully instructed to welcome all who enter and 
who wish to proceed farther through the grounds. 
To those who feel themselves already weary it is 
frankly suggested that he who reads may run. Cax- 
ton will explain to you in his voiceless way that the 
purpose of the gardener has been, while raising plants 
of his own, also to collect flowers from all climes, 
flowers of all colours, flowers of all the ages. Thriving 
in his garden will be found buds of poetry, blos- 
soms of romance, perennial history, sprigs of mytho- 
logy, with the seeds of fragrant legend and folk-lore. 
The gardener recognises that everyone loves flowers 
though everyone cannot grow them; that everyone 
loves romance and a good poem though everyone 
cannot live the one nor write the other; that the his- 
tory and literature of the world are constantly linking 









w 







\ 





Xooge of tbe Dumb porter 



romance and poesy with certain flowers and painting 
for us a glowing floral picture by no means restricted 
to the simple colours of an Apelles palette. 

Pilgrim, would you catch up an armful of these if 
they were ready at your hand? If so, follow the 
dumb porter and he will show you the promise of 
spring and the dingle dell; and the gardener will sing 
you occasional songs of his own and will tell you tale 
upon tale of the flowers in which you will hear myth 
and legend, folk-lore and history a-plenty, but of 
horticulture, not a word. In order that those who 
wish may know whence the flowers have been brought 
and who first planted and watered them, small cold 
frames will be found at the back of the garden where 
Caxton has carefully preserved these little biographi- 
cal nothings in the form of foot notes and these 
are open to the inspection of all seekers after exact 
knowledge. 

As to the grounds themselves, pray use them as your 
own. This is no city park in which the weary palmer 
need dread signs inviting him to keep off the grass and 
attaching strange and unusual penalties to the break- 
ing of this or the plucking of that. The grounds, 
the flowers and the waters are, it is true, as the Brush- 
wood Boy found them, "strictly preserved," but 
preserved only in order to emphasise the gardener's 
hearty invitation to 


























r~bs 



Gbe jfraarant Bote Book 

" Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. 
Old time is still a-flying 
And this same flower that smiles today, 
Tomorrow will be dying." 

Yours is the garden, yours the lodge and yours the 
Dumb Porter who comes now to lead you to the 

GARDEN GATE. 






, ^ H^) V v 





















THE GARDEN GATE 

THROUGH many happy journeyings, through com- 
munings with nature here and pleasant converse 
with nature-loving humans there, I feel the constant 
humming of two motifs as of an invisible orchestra, playing 
sans doute to countless others besides myself, but playing 
withal so softly and intimately that it might almost seem that 
they make music for one only at a time. And the two or- 
chestral themes, ringing now in melodious antiphonal and 
now in harmonic chorus are ever the same to me, — "the 
wonder of creation" and "the romance of creation's 
man. " Being however but an indifferent theologian, I have 
restricted my notes to the man-motif and here we have, 
blown from the four winds of heaven, classic and legend, 
romance and fable, twined about the dearest flowers of our 
gardens and hillsides. 

And if I have linked them all together in a story and if, 
as the guest-book foretold, I have conceived and sung to you 
a song of my own now and then as an interlude, it has been, 

let me hope, not amiss. The odds and ends, scraps and vi- 

5 










/ 










6 Gbe fragrant mote Book 

sions which I have endeavoured to mould together for you, 
have been gleaned from idle jottings in what I have familiarly 
called " The Fragrant Note Book," and by your leave I shall 
relate to you first a little waking dream which came to me 
not long ago and which perchance will serve to unlock the 
door into the inner garden as readily as any other key. 

THE GARDEN ANTI PHONE 1 

Sitting under the waning moon on a midsummer night, — 
such a moon as an August night sometimes brings, — I heard 
beneath my window the sound of impersonal voices. These 
presently arranged themselves in what I might call 
The Garden Antiphone. 

(The Garden Voice) 

Whispers here ! Whispers there ! 
Through my garden everywhere. 
Voices, ho ! do you know 

WHAT MY GARDEN VISTAS SHOW? 

Children Maying, Farmers haying, 

Lambs that frisk, Tree-tops swaying; 
Sunny days, Honey days, 
Lights and shadow always playing; 

Birds alight and birds aflight 

Coming, going, — morn 'till night. 

1 Copyright, 1915, C. Arthur Coan. 



/ 












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r 



Gbe (Barfcen (Bate 

Garden hours like scented flowers 
Fill my summer day's delight. 

(The Pessimist Voice) 







Sweets of May! That is to say 
Sweets for an hour, — lost in a day! 
Flowers of June ! Like the lilting tune 
Of the thrush above, — and gone as soon. 

But of August, what? Ah, I have you there! 

When the leaves all parch and the ground's all bare! 

Midsummer days have but dusty ways, 

Arid and drear are their sunburnt greys. 






(The Optimist Voice) 

From early spring till red leaves fall 
Clear days, wet days, fair or squall, 
Each its note and each its colour; 
Nature has true need of all. 

(Voice of the Flowers) 

The crocus white brings spring's delight; 

The jonquil bold, the tulip bright; 
Poppies today, and the rose alway, 
Flowers these 'till summer's height. 

Then flaming phlox and dainty stocks 

Follow close the hollyhocks 

With lupines blue and asters too 
Standing straight and orthodox. 




W J 








^5 



(, 



Gbe jfragrant IRote Booh 

(Voice of the Birds) 

The tanager calls to his modest mate, 
(Scarlet contrast to the drab sedate!) 
Orioles gold and flickers bold, 

Up in the tree-top and down by the gate. 
Prim little fellows, the finches in yellows 
Cutting a swath with their undulant flight; 
The robin red-breasted, the wood-pecker crested, 
No wing ever rested 

Till day ends in night. 

(The Garden Voice again) 

Come walk with me. I'd talk with thee 

Of joys which were and are to be, 

Of woods and brooks and pools and nooks, 

Of this to hear and that to see! 
Of children Maying, farmers haying, 
Lambs that frisk, tree-tops swaying, 
Sunny days, honey days, 

Lights and shadows always playing; 
Birds alight and birds afiight 
Coming, going, — morn 'till night. 
Garden hours like scented flowers 

Fill my summer day's delight. 


















spring's promise 

GROWN the year with lilies; clothe the fields with 
poppies; deck the bower with roses; all of this will 
nature help us to do, but how shall we know that 
glad spring has come without a crocus or a daffydowndilly 
to point the daring way, or to thaw rough winter into a soft 
and vernal rebirth? And what so bold as the snow-drop, 
the "Herald of fair Flora's train" or more hopeful than 

"The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mould, 
Naked, shivering with his cup of gold." 

What could be more full of the glowing promise of 
spring than those bold coquettes the ruddy tulip and her 
white and saffron sisters. Now may we all find an intimate 
who will watch and ward keep over us such as Lamb so 
affectionately claimed in Coleridge, who, he says, "Tends 
me as a gardener 'tends his young tulip . . . and a tulip 
of all flowers loves to be admired most. " Bold coquettes 
they are and always have been, these tulips, and ever com- 
manding attention to their beauty. Perhaps this explains 

9 















IO 



Gbe jfraarant mote Book 








why Shirley, writing in the time of the iron-fisted Cromwell, 
forbids them the garden which should sometime be his and 
in which so complete will be the poet's retirement that 
"though every day he walk around, the sun should seldom 
see. ' ' Could anyone expect gay tulips to find a welcome under 
such an austere eye? No, whatever else Shirley may have 
been, he was at least consistent in patterning his garden to 
suit the dull brown of the times in which he wrote ; and was 
in his quaint way perfectly obdurate in securing his little 
sacred plot against such an invasion, decreeing that in his 
arrangement, 






" Those tulips that such wealth display 
To court my eye, shall lose their name, 
Though now they listen as if they 
Expected I should praise their flame." 



Not always, it is true, was Shirley of so sad a mien; yet how 
under the shadow of the great roundheads and within con- 
stant sound of the tread of their square toes, could he sing 
a free and abandoned song to a gay little flirt like the tulip? 
Now Lovelace, with his lilt and his ring, laboured under no 
such restraint, nor found it unseemly to sing praise of 
sprightliness where'er he found it; in the bird, the smiling 
sun or in "the rich-robed tulip who clad all in tissu clothes 
doeth woo." 

Spring is generous, too, with her promises, recording them 
up in the tree-tops as well as down by the gate. Here swings 
in the wind a beautiful pink almond, — a modest, small sister 







Spring's promise u 

of the charm of Palestine where it is ever the harbinger of 
spring, blooming before it leaves-out and reminding us 
poetically that its very Hebrew name signifies "to hasten" 
and carrying us romantically back to Mosaic times when 
Aaron's almond rod so miraculously blossomed forth. 
Spring at home is glorious and full of promise, but ah! the 
lure of the spring of the Holy Land, now so rugged and at 
times so forbidding where once it flowed with milk and honey; 
yet ever carpeted in spring with scarlet poppies, the lily-of- 
the-field, the rose of sharon, and canopying us with the 
blossom of the orange and almond. But we are too far 
afield, and in our garden we cannot forget that ' 

Now the noisy winds are still, 
April's coming up the hill; 
All the spring is in her train, 
Led by shining ranks of rain; 

Pit, pat, patter, clatter, 

Sudden sun and clatter, patter, 
First the blue and then the shower 

Bursting bud and shining flower; 
Brooks set free with tinkling ring; 
Birds too full of song to sing; 
Crisp old leaves astir with pride 
Where the timid violets hide; 

All things ready with a will. 

April's coming up the hill." 

Fulfilment follows close on the heels of promise when at 
last April comes up the hill and already we see the daffodils 






12 Gbe ffraarant Utote 3Boofc 

eagerly pushing up their tender green leaves and claiming 
by their courage the attention which even a bolder flare of 
colour might not command. Intimately must Perdita, 
king's daughter though she were, have known her southern 
garden to have talked of buds and blossoms so feelingly 
with Camilio, picking out, as well a princess might, the 

" Daffodils 
That come before the swallow dares, and 
Take the winds of March with beauty." 

But let us be introspective. What, in truth, have we 
here, — a daffodil, such as we speak of today, or a daffodilly, 
such as our gran'thers knew, or the sweet daffidowndilly of 
which Spenser wrote in his Faerie Queen ? Why, in truth to 
answer, we have, forsooth, them all, and all as old as old 
Homer, whose "asphodel " we of later date have made over 
and taken for our own under this slightly varied name, varied 
perhaps to correspond with the variance in species. But the 
rose by any other name's as sweet, and how then shall 
"asphodel" bloom less the yellow because we call it "daffo- 
dil" or be to us less the dear because we see and love it in 
the spring, — the hour of life and living, — instead of growing 
wild and rank amongst the classic tombs of Homer's dead? 
To us with the daffodil comes naturally the picture of snows 
just melting, life just starting, buds just parting, with flowers 
and bowers and birds and sun! And how easy with this 
picture it is to see 



T^\ ^V\ Ui 












Spring's promise 13 

" The Lady Blanche's daughter where she stood, — 
Melissa, with her hand upon the lock. 
A rosy blond, and in a college gown 
That clad her like an April daffodilly." 

Nature is so generous with her spring flowers that we 
must bear with what patience we may the speed with which 
these yellow favourites will hide their heads and run away. 
Knowing full well how much beauty is to follow, one yet 
feels with Herrick a little lonely when they are gone. We 
too can say with him, "Fair daffodils, we weep to see you 
haste away so soon. " But now perhaps, with a deep obei- 
sance to future bulb catalogues) I am to be reminded that the 
daffodils are, after all, only a kind of narcissi with much 
bad Latin added to their otherwise romantic names. I bow. 
I bow meekly, and the less unwillingly in that "Narcissus is 
no less classic and romantic than Homer's asphodel. If 
we are, however, to think of the pretty tales of Echo 
and her lover we must supplant the modern letter "c" 
with the ancient Greek "kappa" and call our flower- 
god "Narkissos, " for so it was that he fared on high 
Olympus. And his love affair with Echo was such a very 
pretty one. 

Echo, you will remember, was one of the nymphs who 
attended upon Hera, and not unlike some other nymphs, 
some modern nymphs, she was passingly loquacious. Zeus, 
of course, soon heard of it and like a perfectly modern gentle- 
man, put it to immediate use. So you see, when he had a 




























14 Gbe jfrasrant iftote Book 

particularly pressing love affair on his hands he arranged it 
so that Echo should engage the attention of Hera and then 
Echo did the rest. But ah ! and alas ! — for Hera, the jealous 
and ever watchful Hera found it out and forthwith decreed 
that in future loquacity should be the least of Echo's failings, 
— Echo who should ever after be able only to repeat the last 
thing said to her. Then appeared Narkissos, the beautiful 
boy who was insensible to love. Hearing something stirring 
in the wood, he called out, "Is anyone here?" and Echo an- 
swered, "Here." "Come," cried Narkissos, and, more 
faintly, "Come," answered Echo. "Let us meet at the 
spring" urged Narkissos, and from the dim recesses of the 
wood Echo sighed "at the spring" and speeding to meet him, 
as Chaucer says, 

" Followeth Ekko, that holdeth no silence 
But euere answereth in return." 

But alack ! Narkissos you will remember was insensible 
to love, and fleeing the spot, left the nymph to waste away 
until only her voice remained among the hills as we hear it 
today. Then, for justice's sake the goddess of love taking 
Narkissos in hand led him to the fountain where, seeing 
his own beautiful image for the first time, he became so 
enchanted that he too slowly pined and finally, if we are to 
believe so great an authority as Ovid, he slew himself and the 
beautiful flowers which today we welcome with the earliest 
days of spring sprang from the drops of blood which fell from 









Springs promise 



15 




the young divinity as he died, leaving the sound of Echo's 
voice lamenting him among the hills. 



" Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears; 
Yet slower, yet; Oh faintly gentle springs: 
List to the heavy part the music bears, 

Woe weeps out her division when she sings. 
Droop, herbs and flowers; 
Fall, grief in showers, 
Our beauties are not ours; 
Oh I could still, 
Like melting snow upon some craggy hill 

Drop, drop, drop, drop, 
Since nature's pride is now a withered daffodil. 



/ AY 



Poor, old, neglected Narkissos ! As a god, even as a very 
little god, you are completely forgotten, while Echo, the 
beautiful nymph, is known and heard the whole world round. 
Why, little god, to most of us your name today means only 
"insensibility," the very insensibility which was a god's 
undoing and which we commemorate in our familiar ex- 
pression "narcotic." "Le rot est mort" you say, "vive le 
roi." Indeed yes, let him live, although this king no longer 
is a god but is become a simple little flower. 

Coy Greek nymph with your pretty Greek fable, here 
must we leave you with your 

"Narcissus fair, 
O'er the fabled fountain hanging still." 






Ill 



THE DINGLE DELL 






" I know each lane, and every alley green, 
Dingle, or bushy dell, of this wild wood, 
And every bosky bourn from side to side. " 

Milton's Comus. 



AND such treasures as I find there, all arrayed in their 
new vernal frocks, all redolent of rich black earth 
and scattering honeyed perfumes; winking with 
dainty audacity from behind a waving frond and smiling, 
quite certain of the worth-whileness of this new life which it is 
theirs to live. I have little human friends, — little boy chums 
and girl chums, — who nod silent approval and wag their 
heads at me with just that mute, blue-eyed and brown-eyed 
emphasis, and who watch me, — bless them, — with that very 
same unspoiled assurance; as unafraid as they are innocent, 
as fresh as the anemones at our feet, fresh as the very 
"breath of life" which was once the surging blood of Adonis 
and which Venus spreads in such profusion all about us. 

And the violets are so like these baby chums. Don't you 
really believe that the violets suck their thumbs when they 

go to sleep on their pillows of moss? I am sure that they 

16 









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Gbe Dingle Dell 17 

do, especially the little monkey -faced white ones. If you 
doubt it, come to my dingle dell and watch them any evening 
when the sandman is making his rounds. As the weeks roll 
on we shall find untold wealth in our store-house. See the 
buds! Smell the blossoms! Pluck them, handfuls, spray on 
spray, 

" Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies, 
Let them live upon their praises; 
Long as there's a sun that sets, 
Primroses will have their glory; 
Long as there are violets, 
They will have a place in story." 

True, my treasury is only a bosky bourn, but I doubt if 
old Greece herself had a more beautiful Ionia or could pluck 
sweeter violets to send to the crowning of her king; and how 
else should Athens have been called "The Violet Crowned 
City" than for these coronation processions from Ionia, 
laden as the pilgrims were with royal violets from Asia Minor? 

It seems to have been quite the fashion to call royal 
capitals "flower-crowned." Athens was not alone in this, 
for we find ancient Babylonia and mediaeval France alike 
weaving lily crowns for their favourite cities even as every 
Louis of that long line had plumed himself on the fleur-de-lis 
which his standard so proudly bore. But between the leader- 
less mob and the greatest of all leaders of mobs the lilies of 
France have fallen into the dust and the great leader himself, 
remembering perhaps the cherished flower of independent 



18 Gbe ffragrant Bote Booh 

Athens, on his banishment to the Isle of Elba, threatened to 
return to Paris with the coming of the violets; for which 
prosaic history has known him as "Corporal Violet" ever 
since. He did not, however, promise to come peacefully nor 
empty-handed, nor "As gentle as Zephyrs, blowing below 
the violet," and the wild-wood calendar tells me that he 
fulfilled his threat, for back he came, neither gently nor 
empty-handed, to make the Bourbons wish that violets had 
never been invented. The Bonapartes seem, indeed, rather 
to have run to violets and one is led to wonder whether it 
was respect for his uncle, or a renewed memory of Athens, or 
merely a pure love for the flower itself which induced Napo- 
leon III to adopt it as his. And when, at Chiselhurst we see 
the stricken Eugenie trying to comfort herself over the loss 
of her Prince Imperial and thinking sadly of the mounds 
of violets on his bier, may she not perhaps have felt the force 
of the old message : 

" Weep no more, lady, weep no more. 
Thy sorrowe is in vaine; 
For violets pluckt, the sweetest showers 
Will ne'er make grow againe." 

But we must leave these principalities and powers, these 
royalties and personages with their crowns and their ermine, 
their crosses and their sorrows, and return to our alleys 
green, "to the musty reek that lingers about dead leaves 
and last year's ferns," and seek the modest flowers of our 
dingle. And the profusion of them ! We often hear of carpets 












Zbc Wxngle 2>ell 19 

of flowers but how seldom do we actually see the ground 
so covered that one can scarcely step without crushing 
out a tender life. Now with violets, yes, one may really 
find a carpet of "Violets dim, but sweeter than the 
lids of Juno's eyes," and for a time, nothing else seems 
to matter, even as in the days long gone when Henry 
Wotton sang 

"Ye violets that first appeare, 

By your pure purple mantles known, 
Like the proud virgins of the yeare, 
As if the spring were all your own." 

And if there were spaces in our carpet not patterned in 
"Daisies pied and violets blue," surely hepatica would be 
there to fill the spot with her thick green leaves and her 
dainty star-shaped flowers. Should hepatica fail us, we may 
count upon seeing the shy columbine gently swinging her 
eagle-clawed blossoms like a rhythmic peal of unheard chimes ; 
while wound in and out, playfully holding violets here and 
anemones there, moss covered in the sunshine and blinking 
at us from the dewy shadows, the arbutus plays at hide-and- 
seek and follow-my-leader with all of the other children of 
my dingle dell. 

How tenderly must the stern old Puritans have treasured 
the sweet arbutus which was the earliest blossom to greet 
them in Plymouth Colony. To them it was a symbol and the 
first harbinger of hope after the wracking voyage and a 









20 Gbe fragrant Wote Book 

soul-trying winter on the lonely and inhospitable shores of a 
new world. Picture then the surprise and joy of the first 
member of that worn little band to find the tiny and daring 
blossoms and we well may know that ever after they looked 
longingly and lovingly for them spring by spring, nor 
looked any man far in vain. 

"And all about the softening air 

Of newborn sweetness tells 
And the ungathered May-flowers wear 
The tints of ocean shells." 

But even in so favoured a spot as our wild wood one 
cannot count too much on finding the shy arbutus, always 
seeking the protection of the sombre pines, — that fast dis- 
appearing type of a sombre people long supplanted. Having 
served to hearten the weary Pilgrims on their barren way, 
arbutus would now be nearly as hard to find in many of its 
former haunts as a genuine Puritan father in sugar-loaf hat, 
long be-tailed coat, solemn hosen and square-toed rustic 
shoes. Cheer up however, for if May-flowers do not always 
come where we would wish them, we shall have many another 
favourite to woo us into contentment. And so we have 
wandered through the underbrush and bramble, over fallen 
logs and crazy bridges, past bog and marsh and under the 
green gothic arches builded by no man's hand but such as 
must awe every man with a soul, until at last we have 
happened upon a sunny nook protected from every wind that 







Gbe Dingle Dell 



21 



blows, "where there is much light, and the shade is deep" 
and where our reward will be a peep at those less sturdy 
flowers which have been planted here to bask in the sun, 
cloaked 'round by the sheltering hills. 

Now if one is to believe all the tales of mythology, how 
very deeply every flower lover must feel indebted to the 
gods and goddesses, the heroes, and the nymphs of Mount 
Olympus, whose welling blood, as in the case of Narcissus, 
could scarcely touch Mother Earth but a new and beautiful 
blossom must spring up to grace the spot and commemorate 
the immortal. The memory of the ancient tale of Narcissus 
and Echo has scarcely faded from our minds when sweet 
hyacinth pricks the soil in this secluded nook and claims our 
attention to his equally royal origin and charming personal- 
ity. And it was another case of Olympic jealousy too, with 
three being one more than company, — Apollo this time filling 
the r61e of chief attraction. Now Apollo was by nature 
gregarious and when he threw the discus or hurled the javelin 
or otherwise disported himself like the young Olympian he 
was, he greatly craved companionship. Hence it was that 
the other little gods and mortal princes came to play with 
him and stayed to wonder; and if they ran less swiftly and 
hurled less surely than the youthful god of prophecy then 
so much the olympian better, especially if the captivating 
little brown nymphs (or were they little white nymphs?) 
were dodging around behind the trees and watching from 
every coign of vantage instead of hiding on the slopes of 



22 Sbe jfraarant Bote Boot; 

Pelion and Ossa. This you know was before Pelion 
and Ossa were piled up to form the grand staircase. 
Enter now 

" The hyacinthine boy, for whom 
Morn well might break and April bloom." 

Hyacinth, beautiful as the dawn and ready to run or toss 
the discus with Apollo. Enter also Zephyr, equally beautiful 
and equally ready to toss things about. Apollo was so 
foolish as to show that he liked Hyacinth the better of the 
two, and Zephyr, resenting the choice, blew an extra puff 
with his west wind while the discus was in the air, deflecting 
it so that it struck Hyacinth to the ground and the Olympic 
game came to a sudden stop. So much did Apollo regret the 
loss of his playmate, according to one version, that he 
commanded a beautiful flower to spring from the flowing 
blood, and inscribed upon its petals the words, "Ai, Ai, " 
(alas, alas) ; and so the little prince of Sparta lives on and on 
until now we can almost rejoice in the spring in his untimely 
and tragic end which, with its recurring promise of life, 
brings us "The lettered hyacinths of darksome hue." Nor 
was Apollo the only one who mourned. Sparta mourned, 
and commemorated the son of Amyclas in the great Hya- 
cinthian festival which opened in mourning for Sparta's 
loss and advanced by stages to the hymning of Apollo. With 
all of these associations before us, how easy then for us to 
understand the emotions of the ancient Greek as he watched 



Gbe Dingle Dell 23 

the spring's oncoming and how easy to sympathize with 
Lancelot and the Queen as they rode over 

" Sheets of hyacinth, 
That seemed the heavens unbreaking through the earth." 

Rome too vied with Greece in her love of these beautiful 
flowers and as we loiter along from grove to pasture and 
down a shady glen we can almost believe that old Virgil 
walks with us step for step while with hurrying stylus he 
notes upon the yielding wax a list of Flora's bounties scarce 
changed today from that he wrote! so long ago when the 
world was very young and the tale of< Romulus was new. 
He shall sing our pastoral: 

"Take the presents which the nymphs prepare 

White lilies in full canisters they bring, 
With all the glories of the purple spring. 

The daughters of the flood have searched the mead 
For violets pale, and cropped the poppy's head, 

The short narcissus and fair daffodil, 
Pansies to please the sight, and cassia sweet to smell; 

And set soft hyacinths with iron-blue 
To shade marsh marigolds of shining hue ; 

Some bound in order, others loosely strewed, 
To dress thy bower and trim thy new abode." 

I wonder if listening to Virgil really makes us grasping, 
really makes us feel that, having been already given so many 
things, we might occasionally pine for one little thing extra. 






24 Gbe fragrant Wote Book 

The glories of our dingle dell are not exhausted and yet we 
can scarcely look at the warm banks where the sunshine 
plays a dreamy dance with the shadowy leaves without half 
expecting to see the breezy cyclamen nodding at us. 

" As some lone miser, visiting his store 

Bends at his treasure, counts, recounts it o'er, 
Hoards after hoards his rising raptures fill, 

Yet still he sighs, for hoards are wanting still." 

Were our wild-wood in the Holy Land, cyclamen we 
should have in countless thousands, and even nearer at home 
we might see "Those wayside shrines of sunny Italy where 
gilliflower and cyclamen are renewed with every morning." 
Let us however be modest. We must not expect too lavish 
a profusion for any one favoured spot of ours for what does 
Mahomet say: "Benign is God towards his servants. For 
whom He will doth He provide; and He is the Strong, the 
Mighty. . . . Should God bestow abundance upon his 
servants they might act wantonly on the earth; but He 
sendeth down what He will by measure; for He knoweth, 
beholdeth his servants." 

Almost as if in answer to our bold wish for the cyclamen 
of the Holy Land we see all about us however the little white 
faces of the Star of Bethlehem to charm us«with its innocent 
purity and to remind us of the little town south of Jerusalem 
where the babe lay in the manger nearly two thousand years 
ago and many thousand miles away. It is amusing to hear a 



Gbe ©insle 2>ell 25 

Syrian pronounce the ancient name '^Beit Lahm" and realize 
how very much it resembles "Bedlam," the Cockney corrup- 
tion for the old Templar's hospital, though of course they 
both refer to the little village nestling in the hills of Palestine. 
The bright star flowers are such sweet reminders of the days 
when Melchior, King of Light, Gaspar, the Little White 
One, and Belthazar, Lord of Treasures, made their pilgrim- 
age from the far East, journeying doubtless through many a 
field where once David watched his flocks and which we 
should now find all a-foam with these dainty flowers, and 
came to lay gold, frankincense and myrrh at the feet of the 
new-born king. 

By this time you will have learned that the dingle dell is 
very full of contrasts and contradictions. Here, amidst 
showers of the little stars of Bethlehem, as pure reminders of 
the dim-lit stall to which the carpenter of Nazareth had 
hurried for protection, and symbols of a glory only Heavenly, 
we find the twisting periwinkle, telling us with its serene 
blue eye that it is a true myrtle, — a sign from the Lord in the 
days of prophecy and a type of earthly power and leadership 
in days more modern. Venerable Isaiah tells us that 
"Instead of the thorn shall come up the firtree, and instead 
of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree ; and it shall be to 
the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be 
cut off." Is it not more than a little remarkable that this 
same myrtle family which should be to the Lord a sign, 
should also from the earliest days of Greece have been an 










26 



Gbe jfragrant mote Book 





emblem of civic authority and victory and held sacred even 
to the mighty goddess Aphrodite, who ruled her realm not 
with a rod of iron but with rods of myrtle. 



"About the sweet bag of a Bee 
Two Cupids fell at odds; 
And whose the pretty prize shu'd be 
They vow'd to ask the Gods. 

Which Venus hearing, thither came, 
And for their boldness stript them; 

And taking thence from each his flame, 
With rods of Mirtle whipt them. 



Which done, to still their wanton cries, 
When quiet grown she'd seen them, 

She kist and wiped thir dove like eyes 
And gave the Bag between them." 






Such dainty reprimands and such gentle punishments as 
Venus could administer to her little messengers were however 
far from being the only instances in which we hear of the 
myrtle as emblematic of authority. Doctor Johnson reminds 
us again of this fact that the myrtle is "Ensign of supreme 
command consigned to Venus, " and it is impossible to think 
of the bay, the laurel and the myrtle except as typifying 
success, and as being the very substance of the victor's crown 
and the spirit of his acclaim. History, poetry, romance, — 
all are full of it, 

" For deathless laurel is the victor's due." 



IS 






I > 










Gbe Dingle 2>eU 27 

It must have been almost in spite of himself that Scotland 
was allowed to crown her Bobby. So sweet a singer, yet so 
intolerant of all authority and so very much a law unto 
himself that it was hard for him to rank an emblem of 
command or victory at the top of his flower favourites, even 
when a grateful country stood vainly waiting and ready to 
place that emblem on his unwilling brow. More than once 
does Burns speak of his preference for the blossoms of his 
own hillsides, and in no uncertain tones: 

"Their groves o' sweet myrtle let foreign lands reckon; 
Where bright-beaming summers exhalt the perfume. 
Far dearer to me yon lone glen o' green breckan, 
Wi' the burn stealing under the lang yellow broom." 

And if the living laurel and verdant bay are emblems of 
victory and success, so shall we find that their withering 
and decay have been taken as portent of evil. In "Richard 
II. " when all are in dread black doubt as to the fate of the 
King, do we not find the superstitious Welsh Captain saying 
to my lord Salisbury, '"Tis thought the king is dead. We 
will not stay. The bay trees in our country are all withered 
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven. " 

But after all, our little world is full of many, many beauti- 
ful things besides myrtle and laurel, — things with neither 
evil portent nor love philtre within their frail cups, and bear- 
ing to man nor threat nor promise, but only beauty and 
fleeting pleasure. And so we wander from sunshine to cool 






~i 



28 Gbe jfragrant "Bote Booh 

shade and from shadow to noon's glare; we cross tiny brooks 
on goodly stones, whistle to the mocking thrushes, throw 
last year's acorns at the impudent squirrels, singing the 
while a merry song and seeking neither crowns, coronets nor 
honours; for in an independent world our bosky bourn is the 
most independent of places, and had we a minstrel with us 
we should choose for our troubadour some carefree scamp 
who could sing with a cheerful abandon 

" I play'd to please myself on rustick reed, 
Nor sought for bay, the learned shephard's meed." 






-Y» 



IV 



THE LITTLE PEOPLE 



"This is the fairy land; O, spite of spites 
We talk with goblins, owls and elvish sprites." 

Comedy of Errors. 

IT is a question debatable between my dog and me whether 
he or his master most enjoys the days in the woods ; 
whether quadruped or biped finds there the greater 
number of friends. When puppy, with a quick, sharp bark 
and his ears a-cock, makes a head-long dive into the brambles, 
I may expect to see Mollie Cotton-tail kangarooing out from 
below, or hear the rapid fire report of a partridge breaking 
from cover. Such things we both understand. But there are 
other times when, like the old plantation negress, he "stands 
fast awake and a-dreaming, " his eyes focused somewhere in 
the fourth dimensional space and seeing the unseen. If I 
call him at such times, he comes obedient to habit, but his 
entire canine mind is absorbed otherwhere and he is thinking 
thoughts unkenned of superior beings. How desperately 
the brute tries to enlighten stupid man! Occasionally and 
with a dramatic art, I am made to understand what he has 
to tell, though I see only through a glass, darkly. Among 

puppy's very best woodland friends are the fairies with 

29 



30 Gbe tfragrant Bote Book 

whom he gambols with reckless abandon and to whom he 
has endeavoured time and again to introduce his master. 
Only a few days ago, with incomprehension writ large over 
his faithful face and a wistful look of his eyes, he made clear 
to me his regret that I was no Melampus, able to understand 
every woodland tongue as he does. He is a clever little 
beast, but you see his education has not progressed beyond 
the spelling of simple words like C-A-T — and R-A-t — , so 
I have written out for him 

THE PUPPY'S LAMENT 

See all the fairies, master, do look! 

Not up in the tree, sir, — down by the brook; 
See them all dance, Heigh-diddle-diddle, 
See them all prance to the tune of the fiddle. 

Master, you surely must see them by this! 

They're good little friends of mine. Blow them a kiss. 
They're smallish to look at and not good to eat, 
But surely they're plain as the boots on your feet ! 

I hope you'll forgive me, sir, if I say 

That you're not quite attending, — you look the wrong way; 

And please, sir, I feel that I'd like if I might 

To play with the fairies. They know me all right. 
I'm really most gentle, because, don't you see, 
If ever I hurt one, how sorry I'd be. 

Now, master, how can you sit on that log 

Seeing no fairies but only your dog ! 






Zbc Xittle people 31 

Look again, master, look again, do. 
There's one on your shoulder laughing at you 

And there on your hat sits a cute little elf 

So funny I'm almost laughing myself. 
Look again, master, look again, do. 
Puppy's not fooling. Honest and true 

The fairies swarm 'round us thicker than bees. 

Can't master see what his puppy dog sees? 



But I'm improving. How could one fail with such an 
unspeakably eager tutor. I am getting now so that I know 
several of the fairies by name and of course they have 
always known me for the great blundering human that 
I am. 

Many fairy things are still dark to me, and among others, 
I have not yet been able to find out much about the fairy 
calendar. It is very easy to see that the Little People love 
the early sunrise and the twilight and the high midnight, 
which is of course their high noon. All the fashionable fairy 
weddings take place at high midnight. This much I have 
learned for certain, but I do not believe that they have days 
of the week or perhaps know one day from another. At 
least, if they do I cannot find out which is their Sunday, 
because they do not all seem to go to church on the same 
day. Perhaps the Mohammedan fairies put on their Turk's 
Caps and go to the fairy mosque on Friday just as if they 
were little djinns in Mecca, while others put off their church 













I 












\ '^n\ 






32 



Gbe fragrant mote Booft 






going until Saturday or Sunday just as if they belonged to 
different religions, like other people. 

You see on this important subject the puppy cannot 
help me much because he recognizes only two kinds of days, 
— black-letter days, which are not bad but lack variety, and 
red-letter days. The black-letter days are the ones on which 
he wakes up hungry (but then, he always wakes up hungry, 
so you see that there's no variety in that), has his meagre 
breakfast (but then, it's always a meagre breakfast), visits 
the cook in the vain hope that she will drop the platter of 
breakfast bacon (which she never does), cocks his eye at 
master in the dining-room who by this time is eating his 
breakfast. This is the period when puppy takes himself 
well in paw and as a thoroughbred, restrains his very 
natural desire to show an interest in that platter of bacon. 
However, he has concluded that it now contains consider- 
ably less enticing crispiness than it did while he was trying to 
trip the cook, and anyway he never did see anything but the 
lower side of that platter, so he is a poor judge of quantity. 
About this time his master folds up his paper, tells his 
puppyship, "No, he can't come," and is gone to the office, 
wherever that is. The office seems to be a little outside the 
doggy mind but it is perfectly dog-clear that children and 
puppies are not invited, and that they would find there few 
chipmunks or chickens with which to pass the time of day. 
It is therefore time to make the usual morning rounds, 
administering a salutary fright to an over-fat rabbit or a 



7 






e^>. 




Ebe Xittle people 

subterranean mole, taking a look at the fairy rings and 
exchanging the compliments of the season with any of the 
leprechawns or gnomes or pixies that happen to be about, 
politely inviting them, of course, to run up to the house and 
promising for himself that he will come again soon. After 
more of this as the sun goes down there will again be some- 
thing to eat (this time probably enough) and then master 
may, or may not, come home. Then too there is always the 
off chance of visitors who do not like dogs, and puppy is too 
much of a blue blooded gentleman not to remove himself 
elsewhere at such times. This, you see, is just an ordinary 
black-letter day. 

And then, there are the red-letter days! Days when 
master steals downstairs in his stocking feet, with his boots 
in his hand and lays his forefinger to his lips signifying that 
silence is the price of safety. How hard it is not to bark, but 
under such circumstances one must only squirm and perform 
that most ecstatic of all canine grimaces, — salaaming low 
with his front legs while he leers knowingly with the upper- 
most eye, dances the latest puppykin with his hind feet and 
endeavours to wag his stump-tail off, all at the self -same time, 
and of necessity in a perfectly abysmal silence. And then 
they have breakfast together, man and dog, not enough of 
course but still less noticeable because it is early. Then, too, 
who cares, — it's to be a red-letter day. 

Now with boots on his feet, an old cap on his head, a gun 
in his hand and a pipe in his teeth, master stands revealed 

























34 



Gbe tfraorant IRote Booh 







and with a clumsy attempt at quiet they steal out together 
into the dewy dawn. Yes, this is a red-letter day. 

On such a day not long ago we met group after group of 
the Little People all trucked out in their flowery best (and 
that, you know is fairy for Sunday best) . You will remember 
that in his lament the puppy had told me that "they knew 
him all right " and it was quite evident that they did. Indeed 
I doubt otherwise if I should have seen them at all, as they 
can dodge behind a shadow quicker 'n you can wink your 
eye. Puppy, however, was a great assistance for not only did 
they know him but evidently knew him for the honourable 
little gentleman that he is, and so when he assured them that 
while I was rather large I might nevertheless be trusted and 
gave me, I might say, quite a good character, the fairies 
took his word for it and asked us if we would like to join 
them in their religious observance of a fairy Sunday, exact- 
ing first, however, a promise that I would take great care not 
to step on the church roof or do any unnecessary harm. 
They explained that as they intended to remain visible out of 
deference to my defective human vision, they could not so 
easily escape from human clumsiness. It seems that an 
invisible fairy is sprier than a visible one. 

I selected a good sound log and with the dog contentedly 
crouching at my feet sat down to watch the arrivals. No, I 
wasn't perfectly comfortable because I was afraid that the 
smell of tobacco might not be the incense that the puppy's 
little friends were accustomed to at their religious gatherings 



Ir 






Gbe little people 35 

and so I had planned not to smoke. True, I thoughtlessly 
slapped my pocket, but I did not actually commit myself 
further than to take out my pouch, and that, you know, 
might have been almost anything. Now, if I'd taken my 
pipe out, or scratched a match, it would not have been so 
easy to have covered my retreat. However it was all 
Wasted, for at least one observant pair of eyes was there and 
right well they knew that bag o' 'baccy, so with a sheepish 
grin (What's that, you didn't think a dog could grin? Much 
you know !) yes, with a sheepish grin — same grin in fact — he 
assured me that I might smoke all I chose as the blue clouds 
would curl up in the air and the fairies would not mind ; but 
I must, as always, be very careful how I emptied my pipe 
and where I threw down blazing matches. He is no in- 
cendiary, you see. 

So I smoked and we both watched, and as I smoked and 
watched I realised that it must be nearly fairy church time 
for the Oxford Quarters were being sounded on the Canter- 
bury Bells and the congregation was fast gathering. The 
lady fairies were mostly dressed in lily white. Now please 
remember that I am a professional man and quite incapable 
of describing any fair lady's costume in detail. Indeed I am 
not always sure whether she has on a dress or a suit and as 
for telling the difference between a frock and a gown, please 
excuse me for I am sure that of this I know if possible less 
than the Dahli Lahma of Thibet. This much I will venture 
to say, however, that all of the charming ladies wore the 







Gbe jfraarant mote Book 

cunningest little lady's slippers imaginable; sometimes 
pink and sometimes yellow, sometimes one pink and one 
yellow; and they did not wear gloves. This was undoubtedly 
by way of making a virtue of necessity, for they had no 
gloves to wear but only just mittens such as you and I had 
tied around our necks when we were about their size. The 
fairies play that these are gloves, because fairies can play 
anything, and to carry out the game they call them gloves 
too, — just "little folk's gloves," or if they are in a hurry, 
" folk's gloves. " You see, we have it all wrong. We call 'em 
"Fox gloves," because we don't know any better. Fancy a 
fox with gloves on ! 

Upon careful thought I am prepared to say that the 
fairy ladies are no whit behind their human sisters in co- 
quetry. Every minx of them carries a little vanity bag from 
which she extracts a tiny little Venus' s Looking-Glass and the 
cobwebbiest of handkerchiefs made out of Queen Anne's Lace. 
If nobody is looking they will dab the tips of their funny 
little noses with a dainty puff from a milk weed which these 
little ladies carry as religiously as they do their sachet of 
fern seeds. 

In general, a lady's head gear is quite as far beyond my 
homely descriptive powers as her garments, but with the 
lady fairies I found myself in luck, for nearly all of them on 
this occasion wore inverted petunias for hats, and one of the 
most chic of them all very obligingly explained to me that 
it was to be a petunia year, and she naively translated for 












£be Xittle people 



37 



me a milliner's poem which she had clipped from the last 
copy of the "Fairies Glass of Fashion." It ran something 
like this: 



Petunias pink, petunias pied, 

With brims curled up 

Or brims spread wide; 
Petunias yours, petunias mine 

With pointed peak 

Like the columbine. 
Thus the milliner Nature 

For Fairies and Witches 

Makes up-to-date hats 

Which she pins not nor stitches. 







Meanwhile the men fairies were clump-clumping up the 
mossy aisles in their Moccasins and seating themselves on 
camp stools and toad stools facing the pulpit in which the 
fairy minister, whom they very irreverently call " Jack-in- 
the- Pulpit" was presently to appear. When quiet at last 
reigned Peter Pan who claims to be the fairies' orchestra, 
started the prelude on his pipes accompanied by the wind 
in the reeds down by the brook and by a band of cupids. 
The fairy cupids are just like human cupids. They all are 
little, — ahem, excuse me, — they all have little lyres, and so 
they join in the music of the fairy choir. After they had 
finished I suppose that by rights a fat and spectacled cater- 















(^ /ys 



38 Gbe jfragrant mote Book 

pillar should have taken a few puffs on a hookah and then 
given sage advice for awhile, but I did not see Alice anywhere 
about so perhaps the caterpillar missed her too. Anyway, I 
should never be like Alice, for perhaps you remember that 
"the caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some 
time in silence" and that I am sure I never could do. My 
currant bushes would resent it. 

When Peter Pan and the reeds and cupids had finished 
their prelude, the Reverend John rose in his leafy bower to 
deliver the regular moral pabulum. The sermon was about 
fairy honour and the pastor assured his audience that it was 
just as wicked for a fairy to work off a lot of False Solomon's 
Seal on an unsuspecting botanist instead of real Solomon's 
Seal as it was to poison the fairy wells or move your neigh- 
bour's landmark. Reverend John pounded his natural 
green and red pulpit and wakened the echoes from his 
beautifully striped sounding board for some time and then 
a collection of fairy money was taken up by the beadle for the 
support of the home where they confine fairies whose nervous 
condition is too much on edge. This they call the "Home for 
the Edge-ed and Indignant Fairies." Puppy tells me that 
it is a most worthy charity. You see, MarcUs Aurelius says 
that " Nature never does any mischief, " but the puppy, who 
himself is something of a philosopher and is far and away 
the better authority on fairies, disagrees with Marcus, 
holding that an edged or indignant fairy is a public menace 
and is just naturally full of mischief. 



Zhc Xittle people 



39 



Now the congregation breaks up and we seem to be 
holding a levee, each little group of fairies politely coming up 
to say good-bye. I notice that immediately they have paid 
their courtesy each one pops something, apparently a fern 
seed, into his mouth, and, presto! he is gone like a puff of 
smoke. No, not altogether like a puff of smoke either, for 
When that goes even the puppy cannot follow it, while this 
disappearance which seems so complete to me, apparently 
hinders him not in the least. As for me, their transmutation 
is sufficiently marvellous to remind me of the boast of the 
Chamberlain in Henry IV and to wish that sometimes I too 
might "Have the receipt of fern-seed, to walk invisible." 
Cunning children of the wild, no wonder the puppy loves to 
play with you. And each one, before leaving, has amicably 
tucked a sprig of forget-me-not into a hollow stump near me. 
I wonder if they remember the story of the Persian angel 
who fell in love, contrary to the angel laws, with a beautiful 
earthborn maiden who twined these little flowers in her hair ! 
The guilty one was condemned to live in outer darkness until 
he and his love should plant forget-me-nots over the whole 
earth. The Persian story-tellers solemnly assure us that this 
was accomplished and that the happy pair were translated 
to heaven where, as in all good fairy tales, "they lived happy 
ever after." True or fancy, we shall need no forget-me- 
nots to keep our little fairy friends in mind. How dearly we 
should have loved to have peeped into those days described 
so graphically by the Wife of Bath in the Canterbury Tales 















4 o 



Gbe jfragrant IRote Book 









and how pleasant must have been her thought of the legend- 



ary time. 



" In olde dayes of the King Arthour 
Of which thet Britons speken gret honour 
Al was this lond ful filled of fay ere." 



Now what does this mean? Here is one of them back 
again, — the same little chap I noticed before, because he 
seems to be a fairy policeman. He wears a little cap on his 
head which these folk call a "Thor's Cap" and we too called 
it the same until the early Christians dropped all their pagan 
names and it was changed to Monkshood. The diminutive 
policeman guards himself thus against evil, for very poison 
is the cap and very potent against spells. In his hand the 
guardian of the fairies' peace carries a tiny sword which I 
suppose he thinks a trenchant weapon, though I can hardly 
repress a smile as I recognise it as the gladiolus leaf that it is. 
His mission however is evidently one of friendly peace 
because if he has swallowed fern seed he has good-naturedly 
added later some other counteracting spell and remained 
visible. He tells me in very good English, though with the 
usual fairy accent, that he has been directed by Queen Mab 
to point out to me anything which I may consider of interest, 
and which is not forbidden by the censor. 

Having seen my friends in peaceful churchgoing, I feel 
curious to know something more about their worldly side. 
The little policeman takes me to the aviation plant where I 





Gbe Xittle fl>eople 



41 



am allowed to peep at the rows upon rows of monoplanes 
and bi-planes all ready for flight. The monoplanes look to 
me like winged maple seeds which indeed they are and the 
little guide assures me that they are the very latest and best 
models on the market for the especial use of small fairies and 
positively never have any engine troubles. The bi-planes 
are of course dragon-flies warranted to fly higher, straighter 
and farther, and make more noise on a given quantity of fuel 
than any other machine since the time of Darius Green. 

I am next especially honoured by being taken to see the 
bodyguard of the queen. This doughty troop is composed 
entirely of Snap Dragons. There are young dragons, lusty 
and full of strength, and old dragons, toothless and gnarled; 
there are dragons uniformed in pink, dragons in red uniforms, 
dragons liveried in yellow and the royal guard of the person, 
resplendent in purple and white. Perhaps one cannot see 
them snapping, — I could not myself, — but one may rest 
assured that they are tried and true dragons and that they 
snap loyally whenever occasion requires. 

By the time that we had finished inspecting the body- 
guard, the little policeman said that it was quarter of four 
and nearly tea time. I asked him how he knew and he said 
that the "fairy clocks" were nearly open. You see we call 
'em jour 0' clocks but they are the only watches the fairies 
have and the minute the little evening primroses begin to 
unfold the lady fairies run to get afternoon tea. When the 
tea is brewed in a fresh little pitcher plant and the fascinating 



■C Of i 



42 



Jibe fragrant mote Boofi 













little painted cups are all stood out in a row, then the good 
fairy house-wife picks a bright new bugle from the trumpet 
vine hanging over the door and calls her good-man to after- 
noon tea. They invited me to try it, but the painted cups 
were so small that I feared I should never know that I had 
had anything, besides which, I might unconsciously use up 
their whole supply of honey and cream. 

Now tea is over and on we trudge, master in thought and 
dog in joy. Does your puppy make these sudden wild 
dashes into the underbrush after nothing? Every dog seems 
to but that is only human stupidity. In reality they go on 
these inspiring side trips to speak with the little people who 
beckon them. I am beginning to learn and am gradually 
classifying the fairies until now I can say with Scott : 

"If thou 'rt of air, let the grey mist fold thee; 
If of earth, let the swart mire hold thee; 
If a pixie, seek thy ring." 

But while I am meditating, I am finally jogged and 
jostled into the realisation that his dogship has something 
more to record, and I am at last able to translate into manish 
what appeared to be 

THE PUPPY'S APFROVAL 

I say, master, cross your heart, 
Don't you see how from the start 
Every word I said was true 
About the fairies; 'cause I knew 






r y? 




Zhz Xittle people 43 

Little dwarfs and funny gnomes 
Using hollow stumps for homes, 

And cross-eyed sprites and elves with wings, 

And Oh, the weirdest lot of things. 

And I say, master, you're all right, 
The fairies saw that you were quite 

As harmless, kindly and compliant 

As they well could hope a giant. 
So we've had a glorious day, 
Made some friends, and now, I say 

How about our turning back 

Just as fast as we can track! 

Pup's all hollow, master dear, 
Knees all wobbly, feelin' queer; 

Awful hungry. How 'bout you? 

Does a man get hungry too? 
Come on master, let's turn about 
Puppy's dry. Tongue's hangin' out. 

Hurry up master, Pup's most dead 

You'll come faster if I run ahead. 



Well, well, could you resist that rascal! Not I. With 
him and through him, I have learned a lot this bright day 
and I can never again feel myself smugly complacent in 







44 Gbe Jfragant mote Booft 

human superiority. That much puppy's friends and jack- 
in-the-pulpit's congregation have taught me. Long enough 
has man thought himself high above all creation in every 
manner of intelligence. I will no longer believe it for 

" This maketh that ther ben no fayeries." 















V 
hera's messenger service 1 

•" Iris all hues, roses and jessamine 
Rear'd high their flourish'd heads." 



Paradise Lost. 



TO my mind the history and romance of the fleur-de-lys 
are quite as engaging as the beautiful blossoms them- 
selves, and as years grow into years and colour after 
colour, shade after shade, and variety after variety are 
produced or discovered, so year after year we but come 
nearer and ever nearer to the possession of a true "rainbow- 
flower," for of course we must recognise the fact that this 
iris of which we think so highly is named from the classic 
Greek and signifies the bow which was stretched in the skies 
as a sign to Noah, the rainbow which never fails to call out 
our admiration. What we perhaps do not so readily call to 
mind is the no less interesting fact that Iris was, in Greek 
Mythology, the goddess of the rainbow and was traditionally 
charged with the duties of messenger. 

As the bow in the heavens which cheered Noah touched 

f This Chapter, together with Chapters I, II, VI, X, and XI, were 
separately copyrighted, 1915, by C. Arthur Coan. 

45 






s\ 



46 Gbe jfra^rant IRote Book 

the vaulted sky at its zenith and seemed to come to earth 
at its nadir, so Iris, the peacock goddess of the rainbow 
seemed celestially equipped to carry messages from the gods 
of heaven to the men of earth, and we constantly find her 
engaged on these junketing expeditions from Hera and 
Zeus to subjects of their mundane realm. So much so indeed 
that the ancients symbolised her by the use of the talaria or 
winged sandals and the caduceus or serpent-twined herald's 
rod of olive-wood, which were the recognised indices of 
Mercury in his capacity of trusted messenger. 

It is thus, with talaria and caduceus that we find her 
invoked by Homer any number of times, as when, in the 
Iliad, the trial by single combat had been arranged between 
Menelaus, king of Sparta and Paris, as a substitute for the 
battles between the Greeks and Trojans to decide the fate 
of Helen. Here fair Helen's presence is commanded thus: 

"Meantime to beauteous Helen, from the skies 

The various goddess of the rainbow flies, . . . 
To whom the goddess of the painted bow (says) 
Approach and view the wondrous scene below." 

That the divine Shakespeare was not above conveying the 
same idea in other form we have but to look a few pages 
through the historical plays to find Queen Margaret parting 
from Suffolk with the words, "Let me hear from thee, for 
wheresoe'er thou art in this world's globe I'll have an Iris 
that shall find thee out. " 






Ibera's fIDeesenoer Service 



47 



While Rome yet withstood to some extent, the barbarian 
hordes, old Clovis the son of Childeric, having permitted 
himself to get entangled with the Alemanni and finding his 
own people on the verge of a catastrophy, pledged himself 
to become one of the new sect called Christians if their god 
could relieve the most pressing of his necessities. At this 
stage of the tradition obviously paganism intervenes, for the 
prayer of Clovis the pledged Christian is recognised rather 
by the gods of Olympus than by the single deity of the newer 
religion, and we see Clovis comforted by a message straight 
from heaven, conveyed as a message from heaven to earth- 
born man had always been and would in mythology of 
necessity be conveyed, by the customary Olympian messen- 
ger service, and we find Iris selected for the duty, with blue 
uniform, albeit without brass buttons or a blank receipt to 
be signed on the dotted line; but symbolising her position 
with less up-to-date crudeness and more romance by leaving 
in the hands of Clovis a branch of her own iris plant as a 
souvenir of the occasion. Either by way of keeping the 
pledge which he had made or merely for the good which he 
foresaw would come of it (being something of an oppor- 
tunist) Clovis embraced Christianity and the fleur-de-lys 
became an object of veneration to be made later on in the 
days of chivalry and true heraldic rules and laws, a part of 
the pride and blazon of France. Officially it first appears in 
an ordonnance of Louis le Jeune about 1147 soon after which 
it is found as a very common charge in the arms of the 











TW\ 







48 Gbe jfragrant IRote Book 

knights of France and England and even of Germany, 
"where every gentleman of coat-armour desired to adorn his 
shield with a loan from the shield of France. " An examina- 
tion of the old records of the heralds of Europe readily 
confirms the frequency with which this occurred. At first 
the symbol appeared upon a field of blue spread over 
recklessly with the fleur-de-lys in gold ("d'azur, seme de 
fleurs-de-lys d'or"). The blazon of the royal arms was 
finally reduced by Charles the Fifth of France in 1376 to a 
form wherein it was no longer seme, but should be borne 
"d'azur, a trois fleurs-de-lys d'or." 

And oh! the pretty legends of early folk-lore which tell 
us of this charming flower; of how an ancient Frankish 
king and every early Louis succeeding him did, out of respect 
to this old tradition of Clovis, use a reed of iris at his corona- 
tion instead of the mystic sceptre; of how fair maids were 
sought and fields were won; of how traitors were shamed and 
Justice was done, in the name of the Lilies of France. But 
other flowers wait, other legends call, our way is slow, and 
needs must that we should 

"Jog on, jog on, the foot-path-way, 
And merrily hent the stile-a; 
A merry heart goes all the day, — 
Your sad tires in a mile-a." 







VI 






THE MORN OF A THOUSAND ROSES 

"I sing of Brooks, of Blossoms, Birds and Bowers; 
Of April, May, of June and July Flowers. . . . 
I sing of Times trans-shifting; and I write 
How Roses first came Red, and Lillies White." 

(Herrick, Hesperides.) 

AND so, though we may not indeed all be Herricks, we 
may surely all sing of brooks and blossoms, birds and 
bowers, — may in sooth, like Herrick, live the gospel 
of out-doors, and seek why the rose is red, why white the lily. 
And had I all the flowers that heart could wish, I think that 
I should still divide them into only two classes: "Roses," 
and " Not-Roses. " There is such a glorious largess about the 
first spring bounty, such a sweet and colourful assurance 
in each succeeding month, and such a trustful audacity in 
the buds which dare the very frosts of winter! 

And nothing neatly prim about Miss Rosa. White she 
can be, White as a bride for Purity; or Red, red as Love. 
Pink she can be, Pink as Beauty, Pink as the very pink 
of Mercutio's Courtesy or Yellow, yellow as "Jealousy, 
the jaundice of the Soul." Nor coward she, supine and 

4 49 









50 



Gfoe fragrant mote Book 







meek, for Rights hath the rose and knows it; A thorn hath 
the rose and shows it. Yes, to me the rose is in a class by 
itself, nor am I alone in this, since, before Columbus plowed 
the Main, old poet Dunbar dared set the rose apart, 

" Nor hald non udir flouer in sic denty (favour) 
As the fresche Rois, of Collour reid and quhyte (white)." 

And even Spenser, great author of the Faerie-Queen could 
find it in his heart to add only the lily to the rose in decking 
the bridal bower, 



" And let them also with them bring in hand 
For my f ayre love, of lillyes and of roses, 
Bound truelove wize, with a blew silke riband. 
And let them make great store of bridal posies 
And let them e'ek bring store of other flowers, 
To deck the bridale bowers." 



1 






Now, note you well, — "And let them e'ek bring store of 
other flowers," — just "other flowers." 

Mighty religious is she too on occasion, if one is to judge 
by the traditions of the East where, on Mount Calasay, the 
Hindu Olympus, we are told that there stands a table upon 
which lies a silver rose, bearing among its petals the two 
holy servants of the Most High, whose duty it is to "Praise 
God without ceasing." If again we turn, this time to 
Mahommedan tradition, we find that when Mahomet took 
his famous all-night flight through Heaven from Mecca 
borne aloft on the back of the supernatural steed Al Borak 















flDorn of a Gbousanb IRoses 



51 



alighting next morning on the Kubbet es Sakra in Jerusalem, 
from the sacred sweat of the Prophet's forehead falling to 
earth, sprang white roses, while from the magic sweat of 
Al Borak, yellow roses came. Question a reverent Moslem 
about this and his answer will be the same to you that it was 
to me, for it never varies. He will lift his eyebrows with 
surprise and ask, "Why not !" Why not, indeed! 

And contrary she is, this beautiful minx. She will cry 
you war or cry you peace, stand emblem for heathen Aphro- 
dite and Christian Mary in the same breath and with the 
same sang-froid with which she presents a bud and a thorn 
on the selfsame branch. That Venus is frequently sym- 
bolised by the rose is too well recognised to require more than 
passing mention, and that the rose is as much Mary's flower 
as blue is the symbolic colour for her cloak. 

Are you a Modern? The rose is for beauty. Does not 
Lord Tennyson make his lover say in "Maud" 

" Rosy is the west, rosy is the south; 
Roses are her cheeks, and a rose her mouth." 

But then, again, are you an Ancient, a very solemn and 
sanctified Ancient? If so, do we not find Confucius discuss- 
ing in the Analects, questions of beauty, and quoting such 
very un-Confucian lines as these: 

" Dimples playing in a witching smile, 
Beautiful eyes, so dark, so bright! 
Oh, and her face may be thought the while 
Coloured by art, red rose on white!" 






52 



Gbe jfraarant Bote Book 



And Confucius, the founder of a religion, the head of a dig- 
nified and nearly permanent philosophy ! Shades of ancient 
China! 

Have you secrets to discuss? Allow me to remind you 
that the rose has from time immemorial been recognised as 
the symbol of silence. Dean Swift, you will recollect, assures 
the Distressed Weavers that, sub-rosa, all is safe, and admits 
that 

" Under the rose, since here are none but friends, 
To own the truth, we have some private ends." 

Beauty and secrecy bound up together. What a com- 
bination ! Beauty and fragrance and love and discretion all 
in one gift from nature. Whatever meaning may be ascribed 
to roses white, to roses pink or yellow, we know that with 
each of us as with Burns, "My love is like a red, red rose," 
and all the whole world round the vehement blush of the 
red rose kindles new hymns to Venus. Do not ask me why 
nature should have decreed that certain chords be responsive 
to designated colours. As easily tell how roses first came red, 
why white the lily; and you will remember that while Herrick 
sang of these things he never really did tell how. That was 
left to the little girl in Wonderland. Do you remember the 
visit Alice made to the Queen of Hearts and what she saw 
in the Croquet Grounds? 

A Large rose-tree stood near the entrance of the garden; 
the roses growing on it were white, but there were three 









flDorn of a Gbousanfc Itosee 



53 



gardeners at it, busily painting them red. Alice thought 
this a very curious thing, and she went nearer to watch 
them, and just as she came up to them, she heard one of 
them say, "Look out now, Five! Don't go splashing 
paint Over me like that!" . . . "Would you tell me 
please," said Alice, a little timidly, " why you are painting 
those roses? " Five and Seven said nothing but looked at 
Two. Two began in a low voice, "Why, the fact is, you 
see, Miss, this here ought to have been a red rose-tree and 
we put in a white one by mistake, and if the Queen was to 
find it out, we should all have our heads cut off, you know. 
So, you see, Miss, we're doing our best, afore she comes. " 

So it seems that in Wonderland, when they made a mis- 
take all that they had to do was to wash it out or paint it 
over. Nothing, it would seem, in that fair country of dreams 
was indelible. How very different it is in life, where we can 
never expect figs of thistles or as the old Hindu fable quaintly 
put it many hundreds of years before Christ, "He that plants 
a thorn bush must never expect to gather roses." Such a 
land of poesy was that India of old, which they even called 
"Jambudvipa, the Land of the Rose-apple Tree." But 
if she is Beauty and Love, so is she War and Strife. Old 
Omar Khayyam says: 

" I sometimes think that never blows so red 
The Rose, as where some buried Caesar bled." 

And, true to her reputation for spice and variety, when 
Mistress Rose cries "War," beware of her. She plays no 
fair game of war, nor shuns she to fight on both sides at once, 






m 



/y\ 



54 Gbe Jfragrant mote Book 

traitor to each. Did Bolingbroke's Lancastrians choose a 
red rose to cheer them on to war, so instantly chose York a 
white rose to prove its cause stainless and to make the 
War of the Roses a royal one. Did a gentleman of Henry's 
Court present a white rose to one of the fair ladies, to whom 
of course it was a badge of enmity, he must soften it by some 
such flattering message as history hands down, where the 
gallant wished that 

" If this fair rose offend thy sight 
It in thy bosom wear; 
Twill blush to find itself less white, 
And turn Lancastrian there." 

? But if, as it is said, "Hard words break no bones, " so then 
sweet nothings cure no wars, and Rose did not cease to fight 
Rose until Henry Richmond of the Lancastrian "Red" 
married Elizabeth Mortimer of the York "White" and so 
peace perched at last on the Tudor banner and compromised 
the colour scheme by joining both roses in the royal standard 
of the new dynasty as we see them carved in enduring stone 
in Henry's chapel at Westminster. 

" Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say: 
Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday? . . . 
Alas that Spring should vanish with the Rose! 
That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close! 

The Nightingale that in the branches sang 
Ah, whence and whither flown again, who knows! " 


















H 



VII 



THE FOUR WINDS OF HEAVEN 

AVING alluded even in the most cursory way im- 
aginable to the four winds of heaven at the time of 
writing "The Garden Gate" the persistent Muse 
would not let me rest until Aeolus and his four chief subjects 
had taken substantial form in The Fragrant Note Book. 

It will of course be remembered that Aeolus, the wind god, 
reigned over Boreas, the North Wind, Zephyrus, the West 
Wind, Auster, the South Wind and Euros, the East Wind. 
Aeolus made his home in a cave among the crags on Mount 
Stromboli thereby giving his name to the group of islands 
of which Stromboli is one and which are called the Aeolian 
Islands to this day. Aeolus' Lyre is of course the familiar 
Aeolian Harp or string stretched to sing with the wind. The 
assignment of seasons to the several winds as here adopted 
is in accordance with mythological habit rather than local 
conditions. In many climes the East Wind prevails in 
spring and the West Wind in the autumn, but one would 
hardly break in upon the old myths for an ephemeral whim, 
nor would the truth be the same everywhere in any event. 

For the legendary order used we might find pretty confirma- 

55 












^>w 



56 



Gbe jfragrant Bote Boofc 



tion by going either to Greece or to Rome. In the former, we 
may view the still beautiful Athenian Tower of the Winds, 
where we see Boreas, an old man, muffled to the chin, Zephyr, 
a vernal lad shaking spring flowers over the earth, and 
Euros, aged and enveloped against November's storms. In 
Rome, we may listen to Virgil's flowing lines, 

' ' While yet the spring is young, while earth unbinds 
Her frozen bosom to the western winds ; 
While mountain snows dissolve against the sun, 
And streams yet new, from precipices run; 
E'en in this early dawning of the year, 
Produce the plow, and yoke the sturdy steer." 

It is hardly necessary to refer to the mad attempt of 
Phaeton to drive his father's sun-chariot through the sky 
or to the pretty myth giving Zephyr the wings of a butterfly 
with which he is enabled to brush the overheated cheeks of 
his flower children during the blazing months of growth and 
fruitfulness. 

THE FOUR WINDS OF HEAVEN 1 

To Aeolus the Wind God 

Aeolus, sound us now thy ringing horn. 

Zephyr's master, come, salute the morn. 
Merry be thy tune whate'er the day 
Sullen winter noon or balmy May, — 
Blind, mad-cap loon, changeable and gay, 
Wynd thy horn. 

1 Copyrighted, 1916, C. Arthur Coan. 










Gbe ffour THUinoa of Ibcaven 57 






Four children of the Dawn, Starlight begot; 

To each a share of Heaven did Jove allot. 

One North, one East, one Southward and one West 
Bring want or feast, bring weariness or rest 
Or care surceased at thy delayed behest. 
Wynd thy horn. 

Up, crackbrain! Art thou sleeping in thy cave 
Aweary of the tasks Olympus gave? 

Boreas' Sire, rest thou not on fame; 

Blow bright the fire, — fan inspiration's flame; 

Re-string thy Lyre, new songs to proclaim. 
Wynd thy horn! 

THE NORTH WIND'S REPLY 

Winter 

Aeolus' voice I heard, calling from Stromboli. 
Lo, at his lightest word, out of the ice came I 
Rushing in headlong flights 

Straight from my lair, 
On through my Arctic nights 

Freezing the air, 
Driving my Northern Lights. 
Who else would dare? 

Came I then riotous, clasping the hand of Death 
Recking no consequence, blasting with chilly breath; 















58 



Gbe jfrasrant mote Book 




Flinging my witch dances 

Up in the sky; 
Hurling my ice-lances 

Down from on high ; 
Seizing on wing, chances 

Death's trade to ply. 






Hi 

Fearful the blast I drew hence in my medley train 
Winter's wild work to do through all his deadly reign. 
Change now in all I see, 

Winter is dead, — 
No more a king is he. 

Boreas fled. 
Beaten at last are we, — 
Spring reigns instead. 

THE COMING OF THE WEST WIND 

Spring 

Slowly, warily, peeps the great orb 

Over the rim of the dawn, 
Yawning m luxury, stretches his arms 

Tracing his course in the sky. 

Climbing resplendent his ladder of gold 

As gently young Zephyr comes crooning. 

Wind of the West, Wind of the Spring, 
Playmate of sun and of rain, 



7 


















Gbe Jfour WLinbs of Ibeaven 



59 



Blowing to tatters the lace-robe of mist 
Slipped from the shoulders of Night, 
Joy in the breath of ye, — Wine in the veins of ye, — 
Life, and a new- 
Resurrection. 






THE BREATH OF AUSTER, THE SOUTH WIND 

Summer 

A chariot swift for every god. 
To Phcebus' car, soaring far 
Cling I,— the South Wind. 

Hot the morning, burning the noon, 
Yet must I cling and swing 
Sucked on by the tongue of the flame. 
Whirling we fly 
Phcebus and I 
Challenging Heaven 
Burning the sky. 
Ah, Spring so green 
I'll scorch thy sheen 
With a breath to remember. 

Too reckless even for the gods, 
See Phaston cast to Earth at last 
His chariot a-smoulder. 

Quickly now to escape flee I 










60 Gbe jfragrant Wote Boofc 

Madly I caper, 
Light as a vapour 
Gather I here a darkening storm 
And whisk it away again 
Smiling. 

Shaking the aspens to waken the morn 

Searing the Zenith to ripen the corn, 

Now when the South Wind is going to sleep 

You shall hear the bees hum 

You shall hear crickets drum 

As the cool sun sinks 
Into the night. 

THE SONG OF EUROS, THE EAST WIND 

Autumn 

High in the still, early air hangs the lark. 

A hot day. A hot day. 
The katydids are clicking, — The bats come out at dark ; 

A hot day. A hot day. 
All golden brown and ripe 

The smiling harvest sways 
And bends to Euros' pipe 

And swings to Autumn's lays. 

A hot day. A hot day. 






Gbe jfour TKIUnos of Ibeaven 61 

The harvest's all garnered, — The cider's all pressed. 

At sunset. At sunset. 
The gauze-wings of Zephyr fan cool from the west 

At sunset. At sunset. 
The daylight soft has fled, 

The breezes now are gone, 
The seasons all have sped, 

The four winds' work is done, 

At sunset. At sunset. 





f/\ 






VIII 



GREAT-GRANDAM S POSY 

IT has come to pass that great-grandmamma is an old- 
fashioned person. Were it not for her sweet vitality we 
should almost say hopelessly old-fashioned ; but great- 
grandmamma could not conceivably be hopelessly anything 
and the dear old flowers into which we shall form a posy for 
her shall be the ones she loved in her early Victorian girl- 
hood, — old-time lavender and verbenas and dahlias, petunias 
and heliotrope, with thyme and rue and marjoram not far 
away. 

You will remember that in the older and courtlier days 
of the past, when hardly a belted knight of them all could 
so much as sign his name, oratory and a certain rough poesy 
were talents cultivated by gentlemen almost without excep- 
tion ; and so they made rhymes and acrostics which one could 
remember without writing, and so again they chose a flower 
or a precious stone as a symbol of each initial and formed 
posies and posy rings for their true loves; and though, as 
down through the centuries the gentry gradually acquired 

the rule of three and the art of writing, yet no one need doubt 

62 






<5reat*(Sranfcam's posv 






63 



\ 



that great-grandam, even as late as her day, had posies 
galore written to her. These however shall not be the only- 
ones. We will for ourselves pen one in her honour. Can 
you not see the dear old lady, wearing perhaps her cap and 
her lace mitts, with mischief in her eyes, sedately strolling 
amongst her pets? 

Geraniums fragrant, white and pink, 
Rosemary, memory's surest link, 
Alyssum sweet and tender, 
Nasturtiums neat and slender, 
Dahlias, guarding the pool's green brink, 
Arabis spreading o'er the ground, 
Mignonette and phlox abound, 
Sage and spicy herbs all 'round : 

Picture thus on sunny days 
Or at even's shadow, then 
Slowly down the bordered ways 
Yonder grandam comes again. 

One cannot think of flowers as hopelessly old-fashioned 
any more than one can imagine great-grandam as out of 
place or really behind the times. It is all just as Marcus 
Aurelius put it when he had the government of Imperial 
Rome on his shoulders : 

" Grapes are first sour, then ripe, then raisins. These 
are all no more than bare alterations, not into nothing, 
but into something which does not appear at present." 










1/ / A 












6 4 



Gbe ffraarant iRote Book 



Not long ago fashion decreed the dahlia out of date. 
Retire the dahlia. Now fashion proclaims the dahlia all the 
rage. Enter again the dahlia in myriad forms. And the real 
joke on Dame Nature is in the fact that the dahlia was 
by no means ancient enough to have been relegated to the 
kitchen garden when the fiat went forth, being then among 
the very recent importations which had been brought in to 
grace our gardens only a bare lifetime before it was exiled 
as antiquated. Small blame that it now threatens to 
take ample vengeance in popularity for its years of unjust 
retirement. 

"And, e'en while fashion's brightest arts decoy, 
The heart, distrusting, asks if this be joy." 



One cannot look at the flowers of long ago without 
thinking of poor, unhappy, demented Ophelia. How gently 
she would have strayed through our garden of the past, 
where she would have found many of the flowers that went 
to form her nosegay. "There's rosemary, that's for remem- 
brance ; Pray you, love, remember ; and there is pansies, that's 
for thoughts. . . . There's fennel for you and columbines ; 
there's rue for you and here's some for me." And grandam 
you see is old enough to have remembrances and human 
enough to have long since planted her little space of rue 
which the dear soul knew as Ophelia did before her, meant 
repentance. So for her tender little sins she planted a tender 
little bed of repentance. 




<5reat*0rant>am's poss 65 

Along with her rosemary, her rue and her mint, bitter herb 
of the Pascal Feast, we shall find that our sweet old lady has 
planted the nodding lavender, quaint and redolent of clothes 
presses hospitably filled with generous linen. Flowers, it 
would seem, are sometimes strangely like persons, and 
quite capable of rising, unlike a stream, above their sources 
and being as it were superior to circumstance. Lavender is 
surely one of these ; having been known in the long ago simply 
as the laundry flower, lavender to us now means, equally 
the blossoms themselves, the perfume and the colour which 
have in turn received names from the nameless one. To 
think of dahlias and rosemary and lavender is to be certain 
that the flower borders of this quiet garden will be made of 
peonies ; and we shall wonder whether, after all, with all their 
varieties and hybrids today, we really love our peonies more 
than grandam has hers, or whether these modern marvels, 
better than their plainer ones, typify Olympian Apollo, the 
first Paeon and the songs of health and victory which were 
raised in his honour and name as physician extraordinary to 
the gods. And just over there, beyond the healing peonies 
come look with me, for 

' ' I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows 
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows," 

while all along the way we shall find the sweet heliotrope 
which perhaps we credit as we do the sunflower, with a bit 
more constancy than is its due. Here again we find flowers 






rv ^ 



66 



Gbe jfragrant mote Book 













very like humans, sharing many of their faults and foibles. 
"'Tis an observation," you will remember, "of flatterers 
that they are like the heliotrope ; they open only towards the 
sun, but shut and contract themselves in cloudy weather." 

And this you see has brought us to the far corner of our 
old-fashioned garden where we may walk "by a cornfield's 
side aflutter with poppies" in the midst of which it is easy to 
imagine the ancient goddess Ceres, a tall and willowy lady, 
carrying in her right hand the blazing poppies which are her 
emblem and which she seems just to have plucked fresh 
from grandam's garden. How clear a type of the world in 
general may we find in this flaming flower as she lavishly 
furnishes us with her beauty, sustenance or a purgatory for 
our choice. Which do we take, — the unrivalled brilliance of 
her blossom, the nutriment of her innocent and palatable oil, 
or the desolating scourge of her opium gum? She offers 
them all with equally smiling grace, leaving man to make his 
wise or foolish selection with the right to bless or curse 
himself as he will. Chaste beauty is his for the taking 



' Like a white poppy sinking on the plain 
Whose heavy head is overcharged with rain." 



Or, being in worse estate, he may consort with the grass- 
hopper of whom Lovelace satirically says "when his poppy 
works, then he must retire to his carved acorn bed to lie." 
All flowers thus have good in them, and some a little evil; 
but highland or lowland, grandam loves each with enduring 



rfj 



<5reat*<5ran&am's fl>os£ 67 

fervour, being partial, if at all, to those cherished blossoms 
of good omen. And her heart went out to the young prince 
of the East singing so sweetly to his Bidasari, for he too 
chose a flower of good omen when he said to his little love, 
"Thou art a jasmine sweet, an antidote to every ill. " 

Now in addition to being a tender-hearted and lovable 
person, she is a wise as well and, o' winter nights dotes on the 
philosophic saws and sayings of old Confucius and smites her 
kindly and winning smile over the pretty concepts which he 
so laboriously collected. Many a time, after the winter had 
fled and the scent of the marshlands was in the air I have 
heard her murmur with the Shi King: 

" All around the marshes shores are seen 
Valerian flowers and rushes green." 

just as we might be doing this moment, for here in the 
hollow both are waving at us, tender rushes and bright 
valerian, which another philosopher tartly describes in the 
language of his day as "the calmer of hysterical squirms, " a 
description which I daresay would startle great-grandam 
out of her five staid senses. For herself, Biblical associa- 
tions are always of the strongest, and she treasures the 
valerian as a sacred first cousin of the spikenard, that 
precious perfume and ointment of the holy book, and thus 
she links her cosy garden with the great world outside. Thus 
she sees the wild hyssop "which springeth from the wall," 
in ever}' sprig of verbena ; and no Druid sitting with sombre 




68 



Gbe jfragrant IRote Book 



visage in the mystic circle of Stonehenge tended the ver- 
benas in his garden of love philters with more ceaseless care 
than she gives to hers here in its quiet corner. It is almost 
the last flower we shall pause before in her garden and we 
turn away thinking tenderly of the dear old charmer and her 
dear old verbenas, put where she should always see them, 
partly because they were they and partly to call to her mind 
sweet days of Venice, with its melodious calls coming from 
gondolier to wall and back again; for verbenas and Venice 
must always run together in mind if you had known and 
loved them together as one and inseparable. 



" A Saint-Blaise, a la Zuecca, 

Dans les pres fleuris cueillir la verveine; 
A Saint-Blaise, a la Zuecca, 
Vivre et mourir la." 















IX 



HEDGEROWS AND HILLOCKS GREEN 

" Some time walking, not unseen, 
By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green, 
Right against the eastern gate 
Where the great sun begins his state 
Robed in flame and amber light." 

L 'Allegro. 

EVEN in the gay days of Charles I there could be found 
this one man of prominence who loved the eternal 
out-of-doors and who had seen the great sun begin 
his state robed in flame and amber light frequently enough 
to warrant his writing lines about it. Lines they were which 
carry their appeal down through all of the years and pull at 
our heart-strings today. How few of the gallants of Milton's 
day could say that they had seen as much ; unless perchance 
they saw a dizzy sunrise by accident at the close of an 
all night's revel. But as the days passed and kings and 
governments passed with them, the wanton surroundings 
of royalty giving place to austere Cromwellism, one may 
picture many of the foremost men of state as watching the 
sun right against the eastern gate; and as Milton's eyesight 

failed him and he had only memories and that marvellously 

69 









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70 Gbe jfra^rant IRote Booft 

stored brain upon which to call, how often must he have 
framed thanksgivings for those hours spent in the hedgerows. 

History, it is said, repeats herself, and we shall not have 
far to go before we find another royal court where time, as 
Young sweetly puts it, was "elaborately thrown away," a 
court where Parisian Louis and Viennese Marie held sway. 
Can we not see the dainty little queen like a pink and blue 
Tanagra figurine, ruling her helpless colony of shepherds 
and shepherdesses, devising quaint games and ingenious 
pastimes to while away the unvalued hours. Then of a 
summer's night it developed that not one of the company, 
not one useless little shepherd or milk-maid of them all had 
ever seen the sun rise ; and imagine their consternation when 
the queen invited — nay, commanded — all to attend the 
next morning's performance ! Poor shepherds ! Poor queen ! 
Few enough suns they saw thereafter, and little good their 
masques and frivolities brought them. The memories of a 
blind Milton were better worth. 

Let us follow this path which leads along the hedge- 
rows and over the hillocks green where the harvest of wheat 
grows in the fields and a harvest of flowers in the neglected 
by-paths and corners. Here seems to stalk a bearded, 
venerable and benevolent Moses, laying down laws for his 
people ; laws for ceremonial religion ; laws of hygiene ; politi- 
cal rules, and rules economic. Here we shall see him in- 
spired by a God ever thoughtful for the poor and resenting 
waste which could be turned to their account; and by his 















1befc$erow5 an£> IbiUocfcs 



71 






inspiration laying down a new and beneficent ordinance on 
their behalf. We have not altogether forgotten it even in 
this sordid and hurrying day. 

" And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt 
not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou 
gather the gleanings of thy harvest. 

And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt 
thou gather every grape of thy vineyard ; thou shalt leave 
them for the poor and the stranger : I am the Lord your 
God." 

How that doctrine would shock the anti-socialist of this 
barbed- wire generation! Now I trust that you sweet friend 
are not poor nor shall you and I be quite strangers, yet may 
we find many choice things awaiting us in these Levitical 
corners of the ungleaned fields. So walk with me, I'd talk 
with thee, of things which were and are to be; of woods and 
nooks and pools and brooks; of this to hear and that to see. 
Some of our treasures have waited countless ages to greet us 
and some fade with the waning sun, but I never think of 
them as differing in ultimate importance or in abstract 
beauty and I am sure that nature wishes us to feel that, "In 
the world's audience halls the simple blade of grass sits on 
the same carpet with the sunbeam and the stars at midnight." 
Many, many will be the things which we shall be permitted 
to see, and many, many will be those which on this trip will 
escape us, only to be at hand with their charm next time we 
come; and we shall love them, every tender one, learn to call 






% 











/ 






J? s / 



72 Zbe fragrant mote Book 

them all by name. Such a list as it will be and how better 
to begin than in the olden way, 

It is the first appears, then only flourishing. " 

Sweet primrose, come and gone so soon. Is it this short- 
lived beauty that has so often condemned so dainty a flower 
to be sung as irresponsible. Preaching Lasrtes, who perhaps 
"himself the primrose path of dalliance treads and recks not 
his own rede" was doubtless neither better nor worse in this 
than blundering Peter Bell, so unappreciative and oblivious 
to all the subtlety of spring that, 

" A primrose by the river's brim 
A yellow primrose was to him 
And it was nothing more. " 

What a pity so sordid, prosy and blunt a realist cannot 
sit at the feet of Puck's companions and slough off such a 
blindness! Dares a Peter Bell of Hiram Clodd make mid- 
night tryst with a woodland fay? Trust them to find a way 
to open dull human eyes, and to great lengths have they gone 
to enlighten us! What things we always learn, what sights 
we see, what songs we shall hear when we sit at the feet of the 
fairies, out of bounds, where "the field hath eyen and the 
wood hath ears." 

But a sound of merry-making comes over the hedge. I 
hear a dog bark and the cheery laugh of young girls. April, 
which a short hour ago was " coming up the hill, " is past and 











Ibebaerows anfc Ibillocte 73 

gone and bright May has taken her place. Through this 
break in the hedgerow let us softly slip over to the bench 
yonder, where we see 

" The hawthorne bush, with seats beneath the shade 
For talking age and whispering lovers made. " 

Here's the day of good Queen Bess come back, sure as 
ever was. Here are doughty lads and blushing maids, 
harlequin hose and ribban'd braids, dark and fair and joy- 
ous. Here are long-high hats and short-square hats and 
ribban'd calves as well as braids, and the rich and pleasant 
smell from the community cook stalls as of one great town- 
ship-doughnut being browned for the common need in the 
open. Now the old fiddler starts twanging away on a for- 
gotten folk-dance and laughing and singing the motley 
crowd spin away over the green. Times and places there 
may have been when custom required that "Jack should 
pipe and Jill should dance," but here the scene is a prettier 
one for hand in hand, up the field and back again, they tread 
the green together. 

" When the merry bells ring round, 
And the jocund rebecks sound 
To many a youth and many a maid 
Dancing in the checkered shade; 
And young and old come forth to play 
On a sunshine holyday. " 

Elizabeth, royal daughter of Henry, Defender of the 
Faith! Have you any doubt that if her gracious majesty 






74 



£be jfragrant Bote Book 










so long since gone were given a choice, she would far prefer 
to be remembered as " Good Queen Bess." Long gone is she 
and long gone also her May dances. Not soon again shall we 
hear the merry crowd shout "The Pole is up! The Pole is 
up." The pole alas is down, the hobby horses frayed and 
torn, the witch's wands and magic hoods are cast away, 
the masks and mummery shabby and forgotten, and 
only memories are fresh and green and free from Time's 
destruction. 



" What's not devoured by Time's devouring hand? 
Where's Troy, and where's the May Pole in the Strand? " 






Troy's scarce more lost, alas, than the may pole in the Strand, 
but if the pole's down, the shabby hobby-horses are thrown 
aside and the rebeck hushed, thanks be that the old spirit 
has not altogether vanished from the land. Still in rural 
faith we seek favours in the four-leaved clover, still shy 
lassies test their fortunes in the falling petals of the daisy 
while breathless with anxiety they murmur, 



^ 






" One I love; two I love; three I love I say, 
Four I love with all my heart and five I cast away." 

"Superstitious," you say. Oh! Bother a meddling 
realist. Have you no heart, reader? Yes, superstitions, if 
you like, but such pretty, harmless little ones with an old- 
world air clinging about them. Besides, if you are a man 
now, were you never a lad once all a-tremble lest the flower- 
verdict be, "Five, I cast away?" Or be you never so silver- 














Ibefcgerows an& Ibillocfcs 75 

haired and dignified a dame as you sit and complacently 
read, were you never guilty — Oh, ages ago — of weakly 
tossing poor innocent marguerite away when you foresaw 
that she had it in her mind to proclaim long before you were 
ready to admit it, "Seven, She loves," or maybe, "Eight, 
They both love. " Come now, be honest; doesn't it even now 
thrill you the least little bit in the world and carry you back 
to the sacred days of "Rich man, Poor man, Beggar man, 
Thief," and haunt you with memories of "London Bridge 
is Falling Down, " and other classics ? 

In the days of long ago when knights were bold and Saxon 
love was both young and strong, our little bright-petalled, 
yellow-eyed friend had not so many to contest with her the 
honours of the hour. Before Shakespeare wrote a line, — 
and there was such a time you see, hard as it is to believe, — 
gardens were as few as sidewalks, but every field and wood 
smiled with flowers to be loved and sung by the Chaucers 
and Spensers and Lovelaces of their day; and among these 
gifts of Flora we find our little favourite more than once 
lauded high above its mates. 

" That well by reason men it call may 
The dayesye or elles the eye of day 
The emperice and flour of flowers alle." 

Granted, one must not expect everything to remain 
unchanged. It would be but an unsuitable world today, for 
we are well warned that, " he who has not the spirit of his age, 







76 Gbe jfragrant IBote 55ook 

has all its unhappiness. " Yet it is refreshing to realize that 
even a flower may rear its charming head generation after 
generation with less change than man makes around it. 
Since the old days at Tabard when poets held dayesye in such 
high esteem, how have styles changed; how have weeds 
become flowers and flowers alas seemed weeds and the 
generous English daisy not the least of these. Danger 
challenges when flower or fruit, nature or man spreads 
bounty with too lavish a plenteousness. Generosity is 
almost the surest road to disparagement in this unapprecia- 
tive world, where even Boswell could tell us of the great 
man who "was so generally civil that nobody thanked 
him for it." How aptly might this be said of the daisy 
in its long years of later neglect ! But a pendulum which 
swings over will in due course come swinging back, and 
styles which change once shall in the end change once 
again. So it has been with this flower of the hedgerows 
which is come into its own even as Wordsworth insisted 
that it would. 



" Child of the Year! that round dost run 
Thy pleasant course, — when day's begun 
As ready to salute the sun 

As lark or leveret. 
Thy long-lost praise thou shalt regain; 
Nor be less dear to future men 
Than in old time; — thou not in vain 

Art Nature's favourite." 







Ibebgerows an& IbtHocfcs 77 

So here we have them again in our fields and in our 
gardens. Daisies pink and daisies white ; daisies small, large 
and middling ; old-fashioned daisies and daisies with ponder- 
ous new-fangled names. Yea, the daisy has come back, with 
her sisters and her cousins and her aunts and we have 
welcomed them and naturalised them and segregated them 
and pictured them and sung them, sometimes alone but more 
often "higglety-pigglety, " like Katrina Van Tassel's famous 
supper. 

" Heigh-ho! daisies and buttercups, 
Fair yellow daffodils, stately and tall; 
When the wind wakes, how they rock in the grasses 
And dance with the cuckoo-buds slender and tall." 

Here lies the world spread out before us, inviting further 
strolls, and all nature seems arrayed to gratify us. She may 
not, it is true, dress up especially for our benefit but never- 
theless, as Emerson says, she "cannot be surprised in un- 
dress, — beauty breaks in everywhere." If the hedgerows 
are full of flowers, the hillocks are green and full of sunshine ; 
and it is good to walk in the glow and feel the soft turf under 
foot ; good to hear the birds in the branches and the comfort- 
able cattle lowing in the meadow; good to watch the impu- 
dent chipmunk scolding indulgent nature over a wormy 
chestnut; good to feel a dog's wet muzzle against your hand; 
good to be a free man in a free world and to walk 'till rest is 
grateful. It is good 






78 Gbe ffragrant IRote Book 

"To halt at the chattering brook in the tall green fern at the 
brink 
Where the harebell grows, and the gorse and the foxgloves 
purple and white." 

But we cannot cease to think of flowers even while we 
take our lazy minute on the grass. How glibly we gabble 
their names without perhaps always stopping to think if they 
link us with other times and other peoples. Some change 
their names, and some prefer to float along forever with the 
brook, bearing a loved or feared appellation of old. Pick 
yonder tall and commanding yarrow. You are stately, 
Yarrow, but I should hardly think of Iliad days and you 
together. Why then do you call yourself Achillea, pre- 
sumptuous plant, and what had you to do with Achilles? 
What was your name, bold one, before the scourge of Hector 
stumbled over you? And did Achilles, tender as well as 
strong, really steep your juices to cure grievously stricken 
Telephus, son of Heracles? Small hope we shall ever know, 
but "so the legend runneth, so the old men tell," and 
yarrow is Achillea to this day, claiming the deed of healing 
and holding high head topping many another more attrac- 
tive wayside flower. 

Crowding even yarrow for space and prominence, pushing 
small and weak things into the dusty road's edge, I see 
another imperious plant that claims by nature and lineage 
the right to lord it over its fellows. Beautiful, and with such 
a sweet and amiable temper, "Touch and I pierce, " says the 












Ibefcgerows an& Ibillocfcs 



79 



purple thistle in all its glory, conscious of royal descent. 
For long centuries it has been the emblem of the mighty 
Scot and frankly proud of a quartering on the shield of a 
great empire. Very good type of life is the scratchy thing, 
too. Daring itself, and shouting from every thorny stem its 
"Nemo me impune lacessit," it can be impressed only by 
daring in turn and only by boldness overcome. 






" Tender handed stroke a nettle, 

And it stings you for your pains; 
Grasp it like a man of metal, 
And it soft as silk remains." 



Yarrow and thistles may command attention but hardly 
love such as we give to the fragrant clover bordering every 
quiet path along our way, and should St. Patrick now visit 
our hillocks green he would find its trefoil leaves ever at 
hand and quite as prettily adapted to the expounding of the 
doctrine of the Trinity as the seamrag beloved of Ireland ; but 
St. Patrick like many other grand old patriarchs is folded in 
Abraham's bosom, and little enough think we of doctrines or 
sermons unless we find them in the stones, and slow enough 
are we to draw a moral or love a moraliser, so let us leave the 
clover spreading ever thicker over the field and glance at this 
cumberer of the ground. How beautiful are the velvet 
leaves of the downy mullein plant and how sincerely we have 
always admired it, but even the mullein has had its day and 
without it many a candle in the ancient ingle-nook would 
have been wickless and spineless and useless, and many a 

























(( \?v^[ 

1 



So 



Zbe jfragrant Bote !Book 



Pilgrim's winter evening dark and dreary. Can you not see a 
busy Priscilla storing up mullein stalks against the day in the 
autumn when she will dip them one by one into that generous 
pot of boiling tallow and make her indispensable supply of 
hag- tapers to light John Alden on his way? It is always so. 
Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. The mullein 
which was once in such high esteem, now we see trodden 
under foot, its usefulness forgotten. 

Now we come to a parting in the woodland paths. If we 
go to the right, the left will call and if the left we take, what 
will the right hide? Which has the truer heart to guide us, 
the shifting compass or the stubborn sign-post, nailed to 
yonder stubborn oak; compass ever trembling uncertainly 
hut ever true to its distant star, or grim signpost, immovable 
as a surveyor's landmark and probably right, but, also, 
possibly wrong. Signposts are not unlike people, the more 
set they are the more often wrong. This one looks wonder- 
fully "stiff in his opinions." Certainly I doubt if his moral 
standing equals his physical rectitude. Let us be guided by 
the swinging compass needle and come with me over here 
where you may smile with me on my compass of the hedge- 
rows and my timepieces of the hillocks green, — my Clytie 
flowers. 

You will remember Clytie. She was a dainty little 
nymph and like so many other ladies of old, sad, oh, sad to 
tell, she fell in love with Apollo. And did Apollo fall in love 
with her in turn? Well for gallantry's sake let us hope so, 






t 



Ja 






CXn 



Ibebgerows an£> Ibillocfcs 

but in any event Clytie's aspirations met with no Olympic 
approval and legend tells us that morning after morning and 
day after day she watched her god making his round of the 
sky until at last she was turned into a flower to punish her 
temerity. Ever after, so runs the pretty tale, she faced her 
Sun-god from the earliest dawn to the last descending ray. 
Now what was the flower which once had been Clytie? If 
I knew for certain I should surely tell all the world and you, 
and rich would be my reward for bringing a long suspense to 
end. But why be so exacting? If you love blue, choose for 
Clytie this shrinking wild heliotrope, the mere name of 
which means to turn with the sun. For you then, the story 
means heliotrope and the transmogrification of Clytie. If 
perchance, no wild heliotrope grows in your chilly atmos- 
phere, and if you will let a glorious yellow blind your mind's 
eye to all else, then let Clytie speak to you from the heart 
of this less constant but mighty audacious sunflower, than 
which no other more boldly stares Apollo eye to eye the 
hot noon through. Choose you sky-flowers, turn-sols, shy 
flowers or froward, the legend's as charmingly fitted to the 
one as to the other and perhaps even Jove himself didn't 
know into which one he had turned her. With him it must 
have been all in a day's work and if even worthy Homer nods 
sometimes as nod he must if we are to believe Horace, then 
who shall say that mighty Jupiter never took forty winks 
when his Juno was not looking. Search the Olympic records 
and you will find that he did many a worse thing while her 








82 



Zbc jfraarant mote Book 







queenly back was turned. As for us, we shall see Clytie and 
her constancy in every flower that winks away the dew in 
the morning or goes to sleep when Apollo disappears in the 
west. Tom Moore consulted no learned botanist when he 
wrote: 

" No, the heart that has truly lov'd never forgets 
But as truly loves on to the close 
As the sunflower turns on her god when he sets 
The same look which she turn'd when he rose." 

Nature, the Great Appealer. Sooner or later she gets 
into the heart of every man. A Tiberius might look from his 
island home over a world bowing in obedience to his will and 
then turn in homely love to the flowers and vegetables in his 
quiet Capri garden. A Diocletian could resign first the half 
and then the whole of his world mantle, content to give it 
up for a simple life, and prove himself to be in earnest later 
by refusing to lift again to his tired shoulders the waiting 
burden. Imagine the surprise at Maximian's little court 
when they were told Diocletian's message. "Were you but 
to come to Salona and see the flowers and vegetables which I 
raise in my garden with my own hands, you would no longer 
talk to me of empire. " A Washington hears Nature's appeal 
at Mount Vernon after agonizing years spent in his country's 
service ; a Gladstone hears it in the solitary forest ; to some it 
comes as by right, to some by accident ; to one for a moment 
and to another for all of life's span. Virgil could indeed sing 



\\// 



It Y7 






Debgerows arib Ibillocfts 



83 



and well he sang, of a man and arms, of heroes, kings and 
gods, but in the end needs must that he should sing of nature 
in her purity, her simplicity and her bounty, and tell his 
Maecenas, 

" What makes a plenteous harvest, when to turn 
The fruitful soil, and when to sow the corn; 
The care of sheep, of oxen, and of kine; 
And how to raise on elms the teeming vine; 
The birth and genius of the frugal bee, 
I sing Maecenas, and I sing to thee." 

But we have wandered far afield. Angelus has rung, the 
slopes are silent and night comes on when no man can work, 
and we must "make the most of time, it flies away so fast, 
yet method will teach us to win time." We will trudge 
homeward over the hills and far away to our garden where 
some of our flower friends love best to grow. How often do 
you suppose the poor things would choose for a home the 
places to which they are so ruthlessly transplanted? Talmud 
says, "There is a certain spot appointed for every man where 
he is to die and he can die there only." Fatalistic doctrine, 
but perhaps not entirely untrue either of life or death, of man 
or of flower. Can we not imagine a sort of heaven where a 
golden rule is enforced for flowers and animals as well as for 
man? Why not consult them once in a while, they who so 
richly repay every loving thought or attention. 

I perfectly knew it would be just so. Here is the whole 
day gone, — Phoebus fled and Luna getting ready to peep 









8 4 



Gbe ifraarant Bote Book 



at us and not a tithe of the beautiful things in the fields and 
wild places have we had a chance to see. Oh, well. We 
are often told that it is the part of wisdom to rise from the 
board unreplete and doubtless we shall achieve something of 
the same result now by bending our cheerful way homeward 
unsatisfied it is true but very far from dissatisfied. What a 
difference lies there! We shall think happily of the beauties 
we have seen today along the way and wish, I hope, to return. 

"Oh! to be there for an hour when the shade draws in beside 
the hedgerows, 
And falling apples wake the drowsy noon; 

Oh! for the hour when the elms grow sombre and human in 

the twilight, 
And gardens dream beneath the rising moon." 









X 



THE MASQUERADER 

AS in the case of the poppy, so with the hollyhock, the 
learned tell us that it was brought to Europe from 
the East : but what the learned do not tell us, — what 
indeed the learned may be said malevolently to conceal — 
is the ground upon which its mere introduction from the 
East, and the far East at that, should have entitled it to be 
called the "holy-hoc" or "holy-mallow," for the one-time 
romance that it was brought from Palestine seems justly 
discredited. For several centuries it has been the habit and 
fashion of civilisation to consider the East quite the reverse 
of holy, and the farther East, the more unsanctified it was. 
Kipling has framed this thought in a crisp if inelegant way 
when he sings the appeal of the unholy East in the plea to 

" Ship me somewheres east of Suez, 
Where the best is like the worst, — 
Where there aren't no Ten Commandments, 
And a man can raise a thirst." 

But nevertheless and notwithstanding all of this, the 

bald fact remains that the mallow of India, when brought to 

85 










86 Gbe jfraorant mote Booft 

its new European home, was immediately dignified as the 
"Holy-Mallow" or holy-hoc, which in time easily corrupted 
itself into the hollyhock of the present day. However, 
perhaps it is best so, for the plant itself is scarcely less daring 
than its unfitting name. 

As we see the hollyhock today in our gardens, after many 
years of careful breeding and propagation, scientific crossings 
and secret experiment, it is not altogether easy to hark back 
to the earlier stage when it had one colour and bowed only 
once in the season, and that almost at the summer's end. 
This was a matter of note even as late as the time of Tenny- 
son, for he says: 

' ' A spirit haunts the year's last hours 
Dwelling within those yellowing bowers; . . . 
Heavily hangs the broad sunflower 

Over its grave i' the earth so chilly; 
Heavily hangs the hollyhock, 
Heavily hangs the tiger-lily." 

No longer is the hollyhock associated solely with "moul- 
dering leaves " nor with the damp and sullen autumn. He has 
shaken off all of this gloom and now comes to us in a pink 
and yellow profusion along with the buttercups and the 
daisies and pansies of which Katharine Tynan paints so 
loving a word-picture. In the matter of colour too, the 
hollyhock proves itself a merry trickster, and like many 
another lives a bold and dual life, justifying the famous 
dramatist who asserts that 



\ 






£be ffl>a0querat>er 87 

"Things are not all what they seem. 
Skimmed milk masquerades as cream." 

On the strength of the natural and original colour of the 
mallows, the family name of Malve was adopted to designate 
the purple which originally was their only dress. This 
however is only the Occidental story of the hollyhock's 
colour. In the Orient this chameleon presses other interests, 
and filling a commercial end by producing a very valuable 
blue dye, has gone down into Eastern history and song in 
connection with the royal blue of Heaven instead of the royal 
purple of Earth. Before the days of aniline dyes, a large 
part of the blue which we so cheerfully accepted as "indigo" 
was, it is said, the product of this very colourful plant, and 
in this connection, and as illustrating one of the many uses 
to which fable has put this blue dye of India, I cannot forbear 
to repeat from the Sanskrit a fable older than Christianity, 
older than ^Esop, older perhaps than Rome herself, contained 
in an antique Indian fable-collection, and known as 

THE DYED JACKAL 

And the goose said to the King: 
" Your Royal memory doubtless retains the story of 
The Jackal's fate, who being coloured blue, 
Leaving his party, left his own life too." 

"No. How was that ? " said the King, and the goose related 

THE STORY OF THE DYED JACKAL 

A jackal once upon a time, as he was prowling about the 
suburbs of the town, slipped into a blue- vat ; and, not being 















88 




Zbe feasant mote Book 



able to get out, he laid himself down so as to be taken for 
dead. The dyer, coming in presently and finding what 
seemed to be a dead jackal, carried him into the jungle 
and flung him away. Left to himself the jackal found his 
natural colour changed to a splendid blue. "Really," he 
reflected, "I am now of a most magnificent tint; why 
should I not make it conduce to my elevation?" With 
this in view he assembled the other jackals, and thus 
harangued them : 

"Good people, the goddess of the wood, with her own 
divine hand, and with every magical herb of the forest, 
has anointed me King. Behold the complexion of 
royalty! And henceforth transact nothing without my 
imperial permission." 

The jackals, overcome by so distinguished a colour, 
could do nothing but prostrate themselves and promise 
obedience. His reign, thus begun, extended to the lions 
and tigers; and with these high-born attendants he 
allowed himself to despise the jackals, keeping his own 
kindred at a distance as though ashamed of them. The 
jackals were indignant, but an old beast of their number 
thus consoled them : 

"Leave the impudent fellow to me. I will contrive his 
ruin. These tigers and the rest think him a King because 
he is coloured blue; we must therefore show them his true 
colours. Do this now. In the evening-time, come close 
about him and set up a great jackal-yell. He is sure to 
join in as he used to do: 

"Hard it is to conquer nature: 
If a dog be made a King, 
'Mid the coronation trumpets 
He would gnaw his sandal string. 



XTbe flfcasquerafcer 89 

And when he yells, the tigers will know him for a jackal 
and will fall upon him." 

"And the thing befell exactly so, and the jackal," 
concluded the goose, "met the fate of one who leaves his 
proper party." 

If this ancient story of detecting fraud by placing the 
suspect in his original environment and watching develop- 
ments, reminds us of David Harum's tale of the canal barge- 
man who was identified by the call of "Low Bridge, " it will 
but serve to prove the claim that there are in reality only 
forty-seven separate and distinct story plots in the world, 
all others being mere variations. That two of these, sepa- 
rated by all of civilization, should turn on the same point but 
emphasizes indeed, as the goose declared, how, 

" Hard it is to conquer nature." 




> 



,\\ 








XI 

FLORA'S SCEPTRE 

" The Lily's height bespoke command, 
A fair, imperial flower; 
She seem'd design'd for Flora's hand, 
The sceptre of her power." 

Cowper. 



ONCE in a blue moon we face perfection. A few times 
in life we look something in the eye in which no 
change could be wished even had we the power to 
work change. So to me the lily has always appealed as quite 
beyond improvement and rather as surrounded by the 
odour of sanctity. Greater folk than you or I have found 
themselves quite satisfied with the lily just as she is. It seems 

as though I recollected Salisbury's telling King John that 

/ 

" To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, 

To throw a perfume on the violet, 

To smooth the ice, or add another hue 

Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light 

To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, 

Is wasteful, ridiculous excess." 

Full well I know that one other royal flower has ever 

contended sceptre and diadem with the lily. Hardly when I 

90 



W 






o 









flora's Sceptre 



91 



see a lily do I dare think on the rose, nor plucking roses, risk 
one lilyward glance. I have a fellow feeling for the Youth 
who sighed, "Which rose make ours, which lily leave and 
then, as best, recall." What a blessing that we may have 
both these imperial favourites; flaming rose in her regal 
beauty today and saintly lily in her perfection tomorrow. 
It seems that we must use strategy as Flora did when, 

Within the garden's peaceful scene 

Appear' d two lovely foes, 
Aspiring to the rank of queen, 

The lily and the rose. . . . 

" Yours is," she said, " the nobler hue, 
And yours the statelier mien; 
And, till a third surpasses you, 
Let each be deem'd a queen." 

That a flower so beautiful as the lily, a flower springing 
lightly and naturally in the soil of so many ancient lands, 
should have become a part of the romance and tradition of 
nearly every classic people is quite to have been expected, 
and so we find it intertwined with both history and legend. 
It has had many names, but then, it has been known and 
loved and sung by many peoples. Old Homer himself, the 
father of all the poets, relates the experiences of Ulysses in 
his journey from ancient Troy back to his native Ithaca, and 
we see the hero stopping with the Lotophagi where he too ate 
the water-lily and thereafter forgot friends and country and 
wished forever to remain in idle bliss in the land of the lotus. 

















^~tf\ 






92 ZIbe jfragrant Bote Boot; 

Hindu mythology would not be the mysterious Eastern 
thing it is did it not furnish us more tales of the lily than we 
could recount. There was, of course, Lakshmi, the consort 
of the great god Vishnu to commence with. Was she not 
called the "Lily-born" after the pretty tradition that it was 
thought becoming even in a goddess to be scooped out of 
River Ocean on the petals of a blue water-lily : 

" Fragrant with the scent 
Of lotus and laden with the spray- 
Caught from the waters of the rippling stream." 

There in the compass of three short lines we see the imagery 
of the East, the greatest of the East's religions, and the 
greatest dramatist of India, all doing homage to the lily. 

And even in China, where nearly everything seems to the 
Western mind to be as topsy-turvy as possible, where white 
is the colour of mourning and where the asking of impertinent 
questions is not only a privilege but rather a mark of re- 
spect, — even in China the lily is the emblem of beauty and 
loveliness. Among the Manchus, where the binding of the 
feet was thought greatly to enhance a woman's beauty, these 
poor deformed extremities have from days out of mind been 
playfully and admiringly called "Kin Le-en," — the golden 
lilies. 

So look where we will in ancient lore we find the lily. 
In paintings, in carvings, in poems, in history; from all of 
these it is absolutely inseparable. In ancient Egypt, the 










jflora's Sceptre 



93 



same water-lily which held Ulysses spellbound, but grown if 
possible more beautiful, is the sacred lotus of which the 
priests of the Nile are ever chanting: "I am the pure lotus 
which springeth up from the divine splendour that belongeth 
to the nostrils of Ra. I am the pure one who cometh forth 
out of the field." So common and so dear was this lily of 
Egypt that it became in time the symbol of southern or 
upper Egypt as the papyrus was the index of northern or 
low country. In the great temple of Karnak, after wander- 
ing over many acres of beautiful and absorbingly interesting 
ruins, if we pass into the enclosure which is called the "Hall 
of Records " (how ghastly modern that sounds !) we shall find 
still standing two old carved columns erected there to sup- 
port the roof long since gone; and upon these pillars, which 
have stood just where they now stand since the days of 
Moses, we shall find that the masons of almost forgotten 
days have carved the emblems of the south and of the north, 
one face bearing still in clear and beautiful cutting the 
petals of the water-lily to show us of today that the Ramses 
who put them there ruled a country of which the lily was the 
sacred flower, a country whence Ramses, masons, pomp and 
might have long since faded, crumbled and gone, leaving 
only stone and lilies to remind us of their past glories. 

Nor was Babylon behind the rest of the world of her day 
in appreciating this most graceful of flowers. Familiar to us all 
rings the name of the great home of Darius and his capital 
which he called "Shushan," and do we not read in the pro- 












94 



Gbe tfragrant IRote Book 












phecies of Daniel of his coming unto " Shushan The Palace " ? 
Were we versed in ancient Hebrew we should understand 
that this was merely another way of calling this beauty spot 
"The Palace of the Lilies," for Shushan means simply "a 
lily" and was taken by these ancients as a suitable name for 
their magnificent capital. If we recollect the tragedy of 
Haman, it was in this very Shushan The Palace where Vashti 
made "a feast for the women in the royal house which 
belonged to King Ahasuerus." In the palace of The 
Lily. 

Lilies there are too in Palestine and ever have been. 
Lilies red and lilies white. When St. Matthew refers to " the 
lilies of the field," ah! what lilies they were, for of all gor- 
geous sheets of flame, sure none were ever more beautiful or 
more conspicuous than the lilies to which he referred. "And 
why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the 
field how they grow, they toil not neither do they spin. 
And yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory 
was not arrayed like one of these." That Solomon's glory 
would not have been satisfied with mere white is at once 
understood and has been more than once raised as an objec- 
tion by those who had not stopped to consider the royal 
colour of these tender lilies, of which Solomon says, "His 
cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers, his lips like 
lilies." Lips mind you. Red, red lips, like red, red lilies. 
And how beautifully, gloriously red a field of these can be, 
only one who has looked on them in their riot of blooming 








jflora'0 Sceptre 



95 



can say. Lydia of Thyatira had no more gorgeous colours 
in all her busy dye-house. 

Only a poor mean portion of the wonders of poesy dedi- 
cated to this princess of flowers can we tell, — a wealth of 
romance reaching from the darkest days of barbarity and 
heathendom down to the last damp sheet of the morning 
paper. If we had in our charge the sacred alms-bowl of 
Buddha could we crowd all of the lilies of which stories are 
told into it? I suppose it would depend upon the spirit of the 
offering. Do you remember the sacred alms-bowl of Buddha ? 
Endless tales are told in India and Thibet of this mysterious 
wonder-worker. Should a thief try to steal it, as rash men 
have, it grows so heavy that ten elephants cannot move it. 
Into it the rich may pour their offerings from early morning 
until dewy eve without nearing the brim, but should a poor 
wayfarer, worn and hungry, cast a few flowers within, im- 
mediately it overflows with plenteousness, raining benedic- 
tions on the giver. How would you like Buddha's alms-bowl 
as an ornament for your garden? 

But the days are all too short, the tales all too many and 
one must give pause, for "eternity gives nothing back of the 
minute that has struck." Where however in all of the tomes 
of lore could we find advice more delightful to the lover of 
nature and nature's favourites than the behest of Israel's 
mightiest king, 

To feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies." 










// ' 3 




s 







XII 







A YEAR AND A DAY 1 

An Interlude 

BORN way up on a thundering mountain side 
A thousand thousand years ago 
There was I free to swirl or race or glide 
Swiftly down to the pool below. 
How to this meadow so serene I came, 
Busy with murmuring ripples but so tame, 
Scarcely now I seem to know. 

Then came Winter, a gaoler cold and dark, 
And I dreamed the livelong, gruesome night; 

But none were near and none would pause to hark 
And none could see my cheerless plight; 

For the heartless ice that bound me all too well 

In my little trench below would never tell 
Though I screamed aloud with all my might. 

One day I gathered my strength to burst these bonds 
That held so hard and held so fast. 









1 One of the Outdoor Odes by C. Arthur Coan. 

96 













H Jj)ear an& a H)a^ 

Robber, I stole from springs and lowered ponds 

Till Snap and Crack went the ice at last. 
Free, now I can sing my song and play 
Every prankish trick that comes my way 

And laugh with glee at the dream that's past. 

Watch me tickle the rushes in the shade 
Of the old mill where the waters run ; 

Watch how with interest ample I've repaid 
Each smiling shaft of the welcome sun; 

Watch me caress the bank and splash that stone 

All over with spray and hear me drone 
The lazy song I have just begun. 

Hotter and hotter still the sun at noon 

Seems to grow and everywhere 
Beasts a-thirsting drink me, so that soon 

I shall have no drop to spare. 
I sink exhausted into the thirsty earth, 
If succour come not soon my life is worth 

Three ha'pence, — naught, — a breath of air. 

A driving storm fills every puddle flowing; 

Once more I'm the jolly brook I'd be. 
I've stayed here all too long and must be going 

A hundred miles to join the sea. 
My run to the ocean's only half the way; 
I'm due on the mountain top in A year and a day 

By the god of the river's fixed decree. 



97 












^v^hvA 



erf 






XIII 

THE CHANCELLOR'S CONSCIENCE 

IF "three barley-corns, round and dry" make an inch, 
then tell me please, how tall is a flower? Now, ever 
since the days when Edward of Carnarvon was King of 
Albion, the three little grains of barley, provided they were 
sufficiently round and sufficiently dry, have measured an 
inch in the law, and yet no man has ventured to say how tall 
a flower is! If I speak of beautiful flowers do you not think 
of sheltered gardens and sequestered nooks and perhaps, 
oh ye city-bred, of greenhouses and of the florist's foggy shop 
on the corner? Are these not all a part of Flora's crown? 
Indeed yes, but there are others and still again, others. 
Larger perhaps, sturdier surely, but as full of radiance as the 
dawn, and who shall measure them with a foot rule or decry 
them because forsooth they lift their heads on a longer stem 
than their sisters. 

Once upon a time in days long past and nearly forgotten 
there was a man who wrote of philosophy and of humility, 
of learning and of friends, and, surprising to state, he wrote 

of law as well. Let us clip a page from his wisdom on this 

98 










\ 










Zhc Chancellor's Conscience 



99 



dreary subject. ' ' Equity, ' ' he says, " is a roguish thing. For 
Law we have a measure, — know what to trust to ; Equity is 
according to the conscience of him that is Chancellor, and 
as that is larger or narrower, so is Equity. 'Tis all one as if 
they should make the standard for the measure we call a 
■ foot, ' a Chancellor's foot ; What an uncertain measure would 
this be! One Chancellor has a long foot, another a short 
foot, a third an indifferent foot. 'Tis the same thing in the 
Chancellor's conscience." So it is much easier to measure 
flowers by the Chancellor's conscience than with a tape, and 
all of the seasons through I have matchless things over here 
in the deep quiet forests and in yonder orchards which equal 
the best your hot-house robber has to charm you with. 
Shall we take a look? 

Let it be spring then with all of the apple trees in blossom, 
pink as Aurora and light as the spin-drift blown from one of 
Neptune's waves. Find me a flower more perfect in all that 
goes to make perfection, — form, colour, perfume, and the 
luscious fruit to follow. And then if you are philosophically 
inclined, you will find a good bit of food for thought as well 
as for the table, for if one stops to consider it the apple is by 
way of being the very father of all the fruits of history. 
Think of Hercules, sent to steal his dear stepmother's wed- 
ding presents. That would hardly pass as the correct thing 
today. It is not being done now, but it seems that it was all 
right in the days when Earth gave Juno the Apples of 
Hesperides at her nuptials. It was, we will admit, a rather 




























ioo Gbe jfraorant Bote Boofe 

low trick of Hercules to make Atlas play monkey to his cat 
by getting the coveted treasures for him, but one must 
remember that Hercules was not after mere chestnuts but 
apples and golden ones at that. Without considering the 
very hard trip he had in finding the land behind the North 
Wind where the Hyperboreans lived and where he dis- 
covered the apples at last, Hercules must also have gotten 
very weary holding the earth on his shoulders while Atlas 
was absent obtaining the precious fruit, so perhaps we may 
feel that he paid a fair price for what he got, and I do not 
believe that Minerva half appreciated the gift when they 
were presented to her. 

And then there was the Garden of Eden. We are not told 
in Genesis that the forbidden fruit resembled an apple, but 
an apple it has always been nevertheless and it is far too late 
to change it now. You may not believe that form of the 
story. I may not believe the stories of Al Koran, either, but 
I must nevertheless consider the fact that my Moslem 
brothers believe them or I shall never understand a page of 
Mahommedan history. Ever since European art began, the 
apple has signified Adam and the temptation in the Garden 
of Eden, and if it be an error, it lies far out of my path to 
correct it. Do you know that wonderful engraving by Al- 
brecht Durer which he started as a Venus and Adonis and 
finally finished as Adam and Eve? I hope you know it. It 
stands before me as I write ; Eve persuasively talking to her 
spouse, a toad and a cat, a goat and a parrot in the back- 








Zhe Chancellor's Conscience 



IOI 



ground for local colour, the serpent hanging to the tree at her 
elbow with sibilant advice, and Eve holding the apple ready 
to give it to the father of the race. Jolly big, fat apple, too. 
A voila. 

We were talking only a short time ago of Troy and Time's 
devouring progress. Where's Troy, and what but another 
apple led to Troy's destruction. That carries us back almost 
to Adam, doesn't it? Eris was the goddess of discord, — sort 
of an advance agent for all of the future trouble-breeders, you 
know. It seems that she had been omitted from the invita- 
tion list for the wedding of Peleus and Thetis when the cards 
were sent out, so when all of the gods and goddesses were 
assembled she threw into the group a beautiful golden apple 
on which she had written the words "For the Fairest." 
My, would not that create trouble even today, and it was 
just like that then, too. Every one of the lady gods was 
willing to stake her Olympian coronet that the apple of 
discord was intended for no one but her. I suppose that 
Olympian clothes would not tear nor Olympian hair come out, 
but there was quite an eruption. Aphrodite and Hera and 
Pallas all entered the lists and, although you may not wish< 
to believe it, I am unable to hide the miserable fact that every 
goddess of them stooped to bribery. Zeus, as usual, dodged 
the responsibility of making the choice and left it all to Paris, 
the son of Priam, King of Troy, and Paris decided, you will 
recollect, in favour of Aphrodite. Hera never stopped raging 
until the wooden horse had done its work, Troy was no more, 




































102 



Gbe jfragrant Bote Book 



and Ulysses was on his way back to Ithaca. More apples, 



you see 



So whether an apple is red and luscious or filled with smoke 
and ashes like the Dead Sea fruit described by Josephus, 
it is always a type. In the times of our forebears and their 
sires' sires, the peach got its name, which really means only 
"Persian apple"; the orange to Xenophon was a Medic 
apple and the apricot an Armenian apple, just as the little 
red tomato was more recently a love-apple and the potato 
is to this day an apple-of -earth. And all because a little 
town near Rome's seven eternal hills once abounded in 
fruits and bore for itself the name of Abella. So fruit has 
been "abella" ever since, same as you are Smith and I am 
Jones. 

A magnificent, restful, dignified forest offers its inviting 
shade beyond the orchard. Let us look it over for more tree- 
flowers. One of the very tallest of all these monarchs fronts 
us, covered with dainty cup-shaped blossoms, green and 
yellow and soft pinky-brown. Never a tulip in your border 
had form or colour more exquisite than my tulip tree, and 
never a tulip bloomed more generously. Do you never think 
of it when you handle your wooden ware or send a particu- 
larly staunch crate to the cellar? Crate and flower and 
wooden spoon may all have come directly from the brother 
of our imposing friend. Now not far away stands another 
giant. This time it is a horse-chestnut in all the glory of its 
blooming, waving tufts of blossoms at us any one of which is 



Gfoe chancellor's Conscience 




103 



a bouquet in itself; while underneath, scattered here and 
there amongst the playing shadows are glorious dogwoods, 
pink and white and lavish as few others in their floral decora- 
tions. Truly the forest is quite as much a flower garden as 
your walled and watered space. 

As if to call us again to the East and the kingdoms which 
even we think of as "flowery, " we spy a shimmering cherry 
tree full of present delight and future promise. What would 
picturesque Japan be without its season of cherry-blossoms 
and then a rush of peonies and wisteria and iris and azaleas? 
Do you know the difference between the European iris and 
the Oriental one? I do not mean in their form and height 
and colour. Oh, you know these things quite as well as I do. 
I mean their queer nestling habits, queer as individual 
humans. No? Then watch these two sets, the east and the 
west growing side by side here by the brook. See these 
westerners grow up and up the bank, striding straight for the 
top, intent on reaching high ground. Watch again those of 
the other land, groping nearer and ever nearer to the purling 
water until at last their proud heads wave over the rushing 
stream itself. The East and the West do not mix you see, 
even in irises. These water- lovers need no " Kiku-No-Mon " 
stamped upon them to show us where they came from, and 
they are almost as Japanese as the chrysanthemum herself. 

How I wish that you could see my beautiful forest just 
as it is all of the year around, aspiring and dignified as any 
old Gothic cathedral, with vaulted ceilings and groined roof, 








-*-f 













AvoYA/// / 













104 



Gbe 3fra$rant Wote Booh 



aisles, nave, spires, choirs and all. Flowers are on the altar 
and the Benedicite is always being sung. A hushed and 
almost solemn reverence steals over us while the breeze high 
above our heads intones a liturgy quite its own. Be you Jew 
or Gentile, Turk or infidel, bond or free, it is a divine worship 
which we attend. 



> 












XIV 




AUSPICIOUS HOPE 

"Auspicious hope! in thy sweet garden grow 
Wreaths for each toil, a charm for every woe." 

Campbell. 

AND why should not hope be the great gardener since 
without hope there would be no gardens! It is 
perhaps a trite saying that the wish is father to the 
thought, but in it lies partly hidden the germ of a great 
gardening truth. We hope for those things for which we 
wish, I grant you, but can we truly be said to hope for 
bounties which lie far beyond the horizon of probable fulfil- 
ment? Wishes may be as boundless as the imagination but 
hope is ever defined as being a desire coupled with a prospect 
of realisation. Of all created things man himself is the least 
reliable and with man we may look for exceptions, failures 
and disappointments; but the law of Nature, if we look with 
care, is seen to be as the law of the Medes and Persians which 
altereth not. When science happens upon what appears to 
be an exception to a natural law, no time is wasted in looking 
for a broken rule. No such thing ever existed. All of the 

energy of research is bent to discover what hither-to unknown 

105 






106 Gbe jfraorant mote Book 

law or combination of laws has acted in the particular case to 
produce a result which takes on the appearance of anarchy 
but is not. Were all oaks sprung from exactly similar acorns 
and subjected to precisely similar conditions, then would all 
oaks be as like as "The twinnes (twins) of Hippocrates, who 
were as lyke as one pease is to another." Now Nature knows 
nothing whatever of mutiny nor has she a single disobedient 
subject throughout her realm. What she promises, that she 
will most surely perform ; and in this has ever lain the great 
hope which inspires every gardener or tiller of the soil. 
How should we plant except by hope? Faith is a happy and 
religious state which transcends mere demonstration. Faith 
is given to some but not to all. Hope on the contrary 
"springs eternal in the human breast," as universal as 
Nature's fulfilment of her promises. The world would have 
starved long before it had gained a co-ordinated faith had not 
Nature, or Divine Providence shown a bountiful succession of 
sun and rain, of nutriment in the soil and life in the air and 
stood always ready with that vital something which we call a 
germ and which is mysteriously tucked away in every seed. 
In this is the hope in which every man is my brother, whether 
he have a higher faith or not; and this trustful expectancy 
in the powers unknown has made good gardeners of many 
materialistic and most unreligious peoples. It may not be 
faith, but it is indeed an auspicious hope. 

We have nearly finished the circuit of our freehold, 
nestling dingle and windswept field, sunny garden and 






auspicious 1bope 107 

sombre grove. Spring has lured us with her promise, summer 
has yielded us her treasures, both seasons have preached to us 
their sermons ; Michaelmas has come and gone and with it the 
Indian Summer, that meditative, pungent week which seems to 
call us, becoming articulate again as " thedead summer's soul." 
To some, the windy days, the falling leaves, the grey 
hoar-frost on the grasses of an early morning, make a picture 
of sadness and desolation, as when Bryant writes 

" The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, 
Of wailing winds and naked woods, and meadows, brown and 
sere." 

But for me, I can never look at a whirl of falling leaves 
chasing each other in a mad scramble across the lawn that 
they do not seem to me messengers come straight from Comus 
the little god of laughter. Every separate leaf hurries along 
with his mind on his work, each apparently bearing some side- 
splitting joke which he is in duty bound to deliver with the 
utmost speed to some solemn and unappreciative human 
just around the corner. I quite agree with Peter Pan's 
biographer when he asserts that "there is almost nothing 
that has such a keen sense of fun as a fallen leaf." See them 
over there playing bury my leader in that corner by the fence. 
Don't you see, the game is to keep the big fellows pinned into 
a wind-trap while the little coves go flying along outside 
and deliver their messages first. If you watch them you will 
see that they are ever so much more adroit at playing last 
tag and prisoner's base than ever you were. They never 












108 Gbe jfraarant Bote Booh 

have to ask teacher for a day off. That's what they are all 
the time, — always just leaving for the other place. 

The fall never looks dreary to me. It is to me " the year's 
last, loveliest smile, " and I love to think of Nature as casting 
the leaves down with her bountiful hand, not at all as being 
through with them, for she is never through with anything, 
but as a snuggly comforter to guard the tender things of 
earth from the frosts to come and at the same time returning 
with a magnificent opulence to the hungry soil much of the 
very nutriment which she had borrowed for sap and bark 
and blossom in the early spring. " So fall the light autumnal 
leaves, one still upon the other following till the bough 
strews all its honours. " Surely Nature never intended man 
to rake up these generous gifts and heedlessly burn both this 
winter's bed-spread and next spring's breakfast as well! 
Nature bravely fortifies herself against the cold and hunger 
which she feels coming on with the singing winds of autumn 
and then along comes man and does his little best to beggar 
the poor old dame. She who does her spring planting in the 
fall will guard it right jealously if left to herself until once 
again "The yonge sonne hath in the ram his halfe cours 
y-ronne" after which she knows that beautiful Phoebus 
Apollo will keep her garden hot for her. 

God Almighty, we are told, planted the first garden and 
by what more charming name could the great law giver have 
described it than the one inspiration chose for him when 
Genesis first was penned, and he called it Eden, the Garden 









auspicious 1bope 



109 



of Delight. How pertinaciously this idea of a divine garden 
has woven itself into nearly every great religion of mankind. 
With the early Hebrews and the later Christians it was ever 
the Garden of Eden. In ancient Greece, with the gods on 
high Olympus and the heroes and their followers, it was the 
Garden of Hesperides; in every mirage conjured up by his 
heat-wracked imagination, the faithful Mahommedan sees 
the waving palms of his Irem, promised to the sons of Allah 
in the Koran and sung by the Eastern poets; while the old 
Norse Vikings saw their Odin and their Frigga, their Loki 
and their beautiful white Baldur in Asgard, and in Asgard 
their Baldur suffered his tragic death as a consequence of 
Odin's folly and Loki's hate. Baldur was to Asgard what 
Apollo was to Olympus and what Ra was to the land of the 
Lily and the Lotus, — the majestic and well-beloved god of 
the sun. So much did Odin wish to preserve and prolong the 
life of Baldur and to put off that evil day when darkness 
should rule instead of light, that he sent his royal messengers 
hither and yon throughout creation, pledging all things both 
great and small to bring no harm to Baldur. Nothing was 
too imposing, too dignified, too trustworthy; nothing too 
small, too insignificant or too mean. Every nook and corner 
was ransacked, every hill and valley traversed; every tree 
in the forest, every flower in the garden, the birds in the 
branches and the beasts in their lairs, all, all were sworn to 
bring no harm to Baldur. Thinking the search complete and 
immunity assured, a festival was called in Asgard where gods 






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no Gbe Jfragrant IRote Booh 

and heroes held high carnival together, making summer 
holiday in their playful efforts to injure Baldur the invul- 
nerable. But as Thetis, mother of Achilles, left unprotected 
that one fatal spot on the divine heel, and as a Delilah 
learned in time wherein lay the strength of a Samson, and his 
weakness, so had Odin failed to make Baldur invulnerable, 
and Loki, ever evil in design, soon found that, because it 
was so insignificant and because moreover it was a mere 
parasite, living on the life-sap of the sturdy oak to which it 
clung, one tiny sprig of mistletoe alone of all creation had 
escaped the fearful oath and it alone had given no promise 
to spare Baldur. Quickly fashioning an arrow from the 
innocent twig, Loki handed it to blind Hoder, bidding him 
join in the sport and offering to guide the aim. Blind though 
the archer was, yet like the arrow which Hamlet shot over the 
house, Hoder's shaft sped true to the mark and the sun-god 
fell dead, Loki's mad design accomplished. Then was summer 
gone from the earth and the twilight of winter took its place. 
Nor did weeping for Baldur ever raise him from his tomb. 

Seldom do we find a number of men who will agree on a 
common object. Terence spoke his conviction when he said 
so long ago, "As many men, so many minds," but when 
Aladdin's lamp is handed them to rub and they commence 
recording their hearts' wishes I find that they never proceed 
very far before with one consent they begin to wish for 
gardens. Perhaps because he was one of the first of printers 
and could see his wish rendered into such readable form, old 



auspicious Ibope 



in 



Christoph Plantin not only built up a sonnet to enshrine his 
garden amongst the other things which seemed to him 
necessary to Le Bonheur de ce Monde, but having carefully 
set it into type he handed it down for all to read ; and here 
we have a few lines of his prayer: 

" Avoir une maison commode, propre et belle, 
Un jardin tapisse d'espaliers odorans, 
Des fruits, d'excellent vin, peu de train, peu d'enfans 
Posseder seul sans bruit une femme fidele." 



And being an ecclesiastic did not, it seems, prevent Dean 
Swift from giving the magic lamp a little rub on his own 
account, nor indeed from stating quite clearly his modest 
but well-defined ideas as to what he would wish for his out- 
fitting in this world's goods and gear. He too, wishes for a 
garden, although he stipulates that it shall be a river front 
property and shall carry with it not only a house, but a 
handsome one, 

" I've often wish'd that I had clear, 
For life, six hundred pounds a year; 
A handsome house to lodge a friend; 
A river at my garden's end; 
A terrace walk, and half a rood 
Of land set out to plant a wood." 

We must not find fault with the worthy dean however, for 
his estimate of an annuity at six hundred pounds a year 
sounds meagre enough to our modern ears and if he wished 







^=$\ 



112 



Zbe fragrant IRote Book 



a handsome house, 'twas merely to lodge a friend in comfort, 
and for the rest, he but sought Nature's beauty and bounty 
in wood and field and stream. He surely was a nature lover, 
and after all, what's the harm of just wishing. We cannot 
all hope to be Spartan Thoreaus and believe that a man is 
rich "in proportion to the things he can afford to let alone." 
Might it not make a difference what the things were? Epi- 
grams are so much harder to live by than they are to con- 
struct. I sympathise from the bottom of my heart with 
that soldier of fortune, courtier, ambassador, servant, call 
him what you will, who said to his Oriental queen : 

" I throw my swords and lances down in the dust. 
Do not send me to distant courts ; do not bid me undertake 
new conquests. But make me the gardener of your 
flower garden." 



Ah ! There spoke a man of metal who knew his own mind 
in the choice of a vocation and was not afraid to speak it 
either. A man who had served his queen and served her well 
in time of war, or he would hardly dare make requests. But 
in time of peace he far preferred gardening to embassies and 
foreign travel, even with added honours. And if you re- 
member, she did what he asked, too. 

Through nearly a year now we have trod these woodland 
trails and meadow paths and the formal walks of the garden, 
together reading Nature's secrets, inhaling her perfumes 
and jotting down her lessons on memory's pages. Nature's 



K 




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auspicious Ibope 









children are going to sleep now and we must not disturb 
them until they have been well refreshed. Do you remember 
the pretty Eastern conceit from the Sanskrit of the Hito- 
padesa where the Brahmin Kapila speaks comfort to holy 
Kaundinya over the death of his son whom Slowcoil the aged 
serpent had just bitten? It is one of the few cases where the 
mysterious Hindu mind can be followed by an Occidental 
and achieves much in these simple lines about sleep and 
death: .//./ 

"Weep not! Life the hired nurse is 
Holding us a little space ; 
Death the Mother, who doth take us 
Back into our proper place. " 

Thus we must think of all sleep in Nature. So even when 
winter comes, Earth, the mother, takes back into her keeping 
the flowers she has loaned awhile to life during the summer 
and which she will loan again as long as summers shall come. 

Only one season then remains of the four, — the winter 
in which gardens and meadows and fields and forests, and 
even the little furry things sleep. And winter is now upon us. 
The birds have long since flown, the trees wave their naked 
arms at us like the weird spectres they are, all the tiny 
things that squeak and hum and chirp and buzz are stilled 
and the garden would indeed be desolate were it not for the 
soft mantle of downy snow which pillows all things so gently. 
As the Psalmist says, He, indeed "giveth snow like wool." 

Once more you will come to the garden before the year 

8 
































) 



ii4 Sbe jfragrant Bote Book 

is out. Always the house is kept open and the logs burning 
and the latch-string flying in whatever stormy weather blows 
our way until after Christmas. Some year we shall perhaps 
be able to decide the still unsettled question of which season 
is the most beautiful in Nature-land. So far we have always 
decided in favour of whichever season happened to be at 
hand at the moment. Winds may blow and crack their 
cheeks, snow and ice and frost and cold may come at Christ- 
mastide, but with all there pervades the sense of that peaceful 
rest which the garden children are having to fit them for 
next year's hard work. We shall welcome you to this final 
test of the garden, and we promise that you shall have plenty 
to do, for ours is a real old-fashioned Christmas, with snow 
hip-high and fires that roar in the old chimneys, kettles to 
simmer on the hob, corn to pop and apples ready to roast. 
Come, do come. So always we round out the year. 

Who'll bring yule logs, — Who'll build fires, — 

Joyful work that never tires? 
Who'll bring holly, — Who'll make wreaths, — 

Who'll sing carols, — Who'll trim trees? 
Who'll bring myrrh and spices old, — 

Who'll bring frankincense and gold? 

Noel, Noel! 
Christ is born. 
Peace on Earth, 
'Tis Christmas morn. 







THE COLD FRAMES 

THE Guest Book lying open in The Lodge of the Dumb 
Porter promised, you will remember, that there 
should be cold frames at the foot of the garden, in 
which were to be preserved evidence of whence the flowers had 
been brought and who first planted and watered them, so that 
you might satisfy every wish for exact information. Here 
are the frames, accessible but out of the way as a good cold 
frame should be. Look them through, help yourselves and 
please close the covers down when you have finished, as I 
think it will be a chilly night. 

Frame 0. The Lodge of the Dumb Porter. 

"To say you are welcome," Pericles, II, sc. 3; "Gather ye 
Rosebuds, " Herrick's Hesperides. 

Frame I. The Garden Gate. 

"The Garden Antiphone, " Coan. 

Frame II. Spring's Promise. 

"The Herald," Churchill; "Spendthrift crocus," 0. W. 
Holmes; "Those tulips," Shirley; "Rich-robed tulip," 
Lovelace; "Noisy Winds are stilled," M. M. Dodge; 
"Daffodils that come," Winter's Tale, IV, 3; "The Lady 
Blanche's daughter," Tennyson's Princess: "Fair daffodils," 

"5 

















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XTbe fragrant mote Book 




Herrick; "Followeth Ekko," Chaucer, Clerk's Tale; Ovid, 
Metamorphosis iii ;" Slow, slow," Ben Jonson; "Narcissus 
fair, " Thomson's Seasons. 

Frame III. The Dingle Dell. 

"Pansies, lilies," Wordsworth; "Violet crowned city," 
Aristophanes; "As gentle as Zephyrs," Cymbaline, IV, 2; 
"Weep no more, " Percy's Reliques; "Musty reek, " Brooke; 
"Violets dim," Winter's Tale, IV, 3; "And all about," 
Whittier, Friends' Burial; "Where there is much light," 
Goethe, Affinities; "The Hyacinthine boy," Emerson; 
"Lettered hyacinth," Idylls of Theocritus; "Sheets of hya- 
cinth," Tennyson; "Take the presents, " Virgil's Eclogue 
II, beginning, "Tibi lilia plenis," etc., as given in Dryden's 
translation; "As some lone miser," Goldsmith's Traveler; 
" Gilliflowers, " H. B. Stowe; "Benign is God," El Koran, 
Sura XLII; "Instead of thorn," Isaiah LV, 13; "Bag of a 
Bee," Herrick; "Deathless Laurel," Dryden, Flower and 
Leaf; "Their groves o' Myrtle," Burns; "'Tis thought the 
king is dead," Richard II, II, 4; "I play'd to please," 
Browne (161 3). 

Frame IV. The Little People. 

" Puppy's Lament," Coan; "Petunias pink," Coan; "In olde 
days," Tale of the Wife of Bath; "If thou'rt of air," 
Scott's Pirate, XXIII; " Puppy's Approval," Coan; " This 
maketh," Chaucer. 

Frame V. Hera's Messenger Service. 

"Meantime to Beauteous Helen," Iliad, Book III (Pope's 
tran.) ; "Let me hear from thee, " 2 Henry VI, Act III, scene 
2; "Jog on, jog on," Winter's Tale, "Song of Autolycus." 

Frame VI. Morn of a Thousand Roses. 

"Rights hath the rose, " Coan, Feather and Song; "Nor hald 



\ 














Gbe Golb jframes 

non udir flouer, " Dunbar, Thrissil and Rois; "And let them 
also," Spenser's Epithalamion ; "He that plants a thorn," 
Bidpai, a Brahmin of ancient date; "I sometimes think," 
Rubaiyat, XIX; "Each morn a thousand roses brings," 
Omar Khayyam. 

Frame VII. The Four Winds of Heaven. 

" To Aeolus," " The North Wind's Reply," " The Coming 
of the West Wind," " The Breath of Auster," " The Song 
of Euros," Coan. 

Frame VIII. Great-Grandam's Posy. 

"Geraniums fragrant," an acrostic, Coan; "Grapes are 
first sour," Marcus Aurelius; "And e'en while fashions," 
Goldsmith, Deserted Village ; " Rosemary, that's for remem- 
brance, " Hamlet, IV, 5; "I know a bank," Midsummer 
Night's Dream, II, 2 ; " 'Tis an Observation," Government of 
the Tongue; "By a cornfield's side, " Browning, De Gustibus; 
"Like a white Poppy," Virgil, Aneid, IX; "Thou art a 
jasamine sweet," Epic of Bidisari, Book VI; "All around 
the marsh's shores," Odes of Ch'in: "Hysterical squirms," 
O. W. Holmes, Rip Van Winkle: "Spikenard," St. Mark 
XIV, 3; "Hyssop which springeth," I Kings IV, 33; "A 
Saint-Blaise," Alfred de Musset. 



To Santa Biagio on the Giudecca, 

In the flowery paddocks to gather verbennas; 
To Santa Biagio, on the Giudecca, 

There to live and to die. (Ti 



;her verbennas; 

// 

?rans. C. A. C.) 



Frame IX. Hedgerows and Hillocks Green. 

"Time elaborately thrown," Young, The Last Day; "And 
when ye reap, " Lev. XIX, 9, 10; " In the World's audience," 
Tagore, The Gardener; "The primrose placing," Drayton, 













\ 



n8 Zbe jfrasant IRote Book 

Polyobion; "The primrose path of dalliance," Hamlet, I, 3; 
"A primrose by the river," Wordsworth, Peter Bell; "The 
field hath eyen, " Chaucer, Knight's Tale; "The hawthorne 
bush," Goldsmith, Deserted Village; "Jack shall pipe," 
George Wither; " When the Merry Bells, " L Milton, L' Allegro ; 
"What's not devoured," Bramstone (1744); "Thedayseye or 
elles, " Chaucer, Good Woman; "He who has not the spirit," 
Voltaire; "So generally civil, " Boswell; " Child of the Year," 
Wordsworth; "Heigh-ho, daisies," Jean Ingelow; "Nature 
cannot be surprised," Emerson; "To halt at the chattering 
brook," Masefield, Tewkesbury Road; "Nemo me impune 
lacessit" ("No one assails me with impunity"); "Tender 
handed," Aaron Hill (1685); "Seamrag or shamrock is the 
diminutive of the Gaelic 'seamar,' a trefoil, hence 'a little 
trefoil'"; "Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis, " 
("All things change and we change with them,") Matthias 
Borbonis; "Stiff in his opinions," Dryden, Absolom and 
Achitophel; "Homer nods," Quandoque bonus dormitat 
Homerus, Horace, De Arte Poetica, 359; "No, the heart," 
Tom Moore; "What makes a plenteous," The Georgics, 
Book I; "Make the most of time," Goethe, Faust; "There 
is a certain spot," Talmud, Sucka 53; "Oh! to be there," 
Sir Henry Newbolt, Death of Admiral Blake. 

Frame X. The Masquerader. 

"Ship me somewhere," Kipling; "A spirit haunts," 
Tennyson; "Things are not," Gilbert; "The Dyed Jackal," 
from the Hitopadesta, translated by Sir Edwin Arnold. 

Frame XI. Flora's Sceptre. 

" To gild refined gold, " King John, IV, 2; "Which rose make 
ours," Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra; "Within the garden's," 
Cowper, Lily and Rose; "Fragrant with the scent," King 



V 









Gbe Colb frames 




119 



Dushyanta's Revery, Sakoontala; "I am the pure Lotus," 
Book of the Dead; "And why take ye thought," St. Matt. VI, 
28; "His cheeks are as spices," Canti, V, 13; "Eternity 
gives nothing back," Schiller; "To feed in the gardens," 
Song of Solomon, VI, 2. 

Frame XII. A Year and a Day. 
Six stanzas. Interlude, Coan. 

Frame XIII. The Chancellor's Conscience. 

"Three barley-corns, round and dry" Statute of Edward 
II (1324); "Equity is a roguish thing," John Selden (1584- 
1654), Table talk; "Kiku-No-Mon, " The Japanese imperial 
crest, which represents the full-blown chrysanthemum. 

Frame XIV. Auspicious Hope. 

"The twinnes of Hippocrates," John Lyly (1579); "Hope 
springs eternal, " Pope's Essay on Man ; " The dead summer's 
soul," May Clemmer; "The melancholy days," Bryant, 
Death of Flowers; "Year's last, loveliest smile," J. H. Bryant ; 
"So fall the light autumnal leaves," Dante, Inferno; "The 
yonge Sonne," Prologue to Canterbury Tales; "Irem Gar- 
dens," Koran, Sura LXXXIX, The Daybreak; "Irem Gar- 
den, " see Jami, Salaman and Absal; " Shot an arrow over the 
house," Hamlet, V, 1; "As many men," Terence, Phormio, 
II, 4 (b.c. 185); Christoph Plantin, Sonnette, "Le Bonheur 
de ce Monde," 

To have a cheerful, bright and airy dwelling-place, 
With garden, lawns and climbing flowers sweet; 
Fresh fruits, good wine, a few children; there to meet 
A quiet, faithful wife, whose love shines through her face. 

(Trans, by J. T. R. Gibbs). 













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Gbe Vagrant Bote Booh 



"I have often wished," Dean Swift in imitation of Horace; 
"A man is rich," Thoreau, Walden; "I throw my swords," 
Tagore; "Weep not, Life the hired nurse," Story of Slow- 
coil, Book of Good Counsel (trans. E. A.); "Who'll bring 
yule logs," Coan. 

























